Objective Pain Assessment Using Deep Learning Through EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interfaces

Objective pain measurements are essential in clinical settings for determining effective treatment strategies. This study aims to utilize brain-computer interface technology for reliable pain classification and detection. We developed an electroencephalography-based pain detection system comprising two main components: (1) pain/no-pain detection and (2) pain severity classification across three levels: low, moderate, and high. Deep learning models, including convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks, were employed to classify the wavelet features extracted through time-frequency domain analysis. Furthermore, we compared the performance of our system against conventional machine learning models, such as support vector machines and random forest classifiers. Our deep learning approach outperformed the baseline models, achieving accuracies of 91.84% for pain/no-pain detection and 87.94% for pain severity classification, respectively.