2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)
Early Detection of Epilepsy using EEG signals
Selvin Pradeep Kumar.S
Assistant Professor, Dept. of ECE
Jeppiaar Institute of Technology
Chennai
sselvinpradeepkumar@jeppiaarinstitute.org
Abstract— EEG (Electroencephalograph) is a technique for
identifying neurological disorders. Epilepsy is a disorder of the
central nervous system characterized by loss of consciousness and
convulsions. EEG is the recording of electrical activity of the
brain signals that can be used to diagnose the epilepsy condition.
Epilepsy occurs irregularly and unpredictably manner due to
temporary electrical disturbance of the brain. The aim of this
project is Epileptic seizure detection in multichannel EEG. In this
paper, the normal, pre-ictal (background) and ictal (epileptic)
EEG signals are studied using higher order spectra (HOS). This
paper deals with the study of the normal, pre-ictal (background)
and ictal (epileptic) EEG signals using Higher Order Spectra
(HOS). The measures obtained were shown which distinguish
epileptic EEG from normal and background EEG with high
confident level.
Index Terms—EEG, Epilepsy, electroencephalogram, entropy,
seizure, bispectrum, bicoherence, and Neural network.
I. INTRODUCTION
Epilepsy is one of the recent most common neurological
diseases, affecting more than 40 million people worldwide.
Though as much antiepileptic drugs have been evolved to treat
millions of patients, most of the patients are unresponsive to
pharmacological intervention. The development of devices
which incorporates algorithms is nowadays emerging in
detecting early onset of seizures or even predicting those hours
before they occur. This lead time allows developing new types
of interventional treatment. The main application of this work
is to improve current epilepsy diagnosis by developing a new
medical signal-pattern recognition framework to distinguish
abnormal spatiotemporal patterns from multichannel EEG
recordings. In this computational framework, the classification
technique for multidimensional time-series classification,
namely higher order spectra analysis is applied.
The base signal applied in the paper is the EEG signal to
study the characteristics of Epileptic seizures using higher
order spectra. Different HOS parameters such as bicoherence
patterns and entropies were considered to study and
investigate the normal, background and epileptic EEG signals.
Features are extracted from the HOS method and the Analysis
of Variance (ANOVA) test is performed. These features
provide great excellent p-values under ANOVA test.
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Ajitha.L
Assistant Professor, Dept. of ECE
Kings Engineering College
Chennai
ajitha2007ece@gmail.com
A. Epileptic Detection in literature
The analysis of EEG was mostly focused on epilepsy
and seizure detection diagnosis [1]. The methodology is based
on three various adroit integration of computing techniques
and problem solving paradigms.
Among all computing techniques, wavelet transform is
effective in representing various aspects of non-stationary
signals such as discontinuities and repeated patterns, where
other signal processing procedures fail or not so effective [18].
The power of this mathematical instrument is to analyze
different scales of neural rhythms which mainly suitable to
analyze small-scale oscillations of the EEG.
In the last decade, chaos-theory has been applied for EEG
analysis for detection of epilepsy and seizure diagnosis. The
non-linear dynamics of the original EEG signals are quantified
in the form of correlation dimension representing system
complexity and largest Lyapunov exponent representing
system chaoticity [2].
Epileptic seizures give rise to changes in certain frequency
bands. The previous analysis is based on five different EEG
waves which includes the following:
• The frequency ranging 1-4 Hz, called Delta wave occurs
during deep sleep, during infancy and during serious organic
brain disease.
• The frequency ranging 4-8 Hz, called Theta wave occurs in
the parietal and temporal regions in sleep, in children when
awake, and during emotional stress in few adult.
• The frequency ranging 8-13 Hz, called Alpha wave occurs in
persons who are awake and resting quietly, not involved in
intense mental activity in normal people.
• The frequency ranging 13-30 Hz, called Beta wave occurs in
people working or active.
• The frequency ranging 30-60 Hz, called Gamma wave
occurs in people paying attention or having some other
sensory stimulation.
II. METHODOLOGY
The data base for the EEG analysis used in this paper has
been obtained from the EEG database got from Bonn
University [10, 11]. The normal, pre-ictal (background) and
epileptic are the three sets of data each containing 100 single
channel EEG segments of 23.6-sec duration. The obtained
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 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)
EEG signals were recorded with an 128-channel amplifier
system, 12 bit A/D resolution and digitized with a sampling
rate of 173.61 Hz. The methodology of the work is explained
by Fig. 1.
EEG SIGNAL ANALYSIS
METHOD
FEATURE
ANOVA TEST EXTRACTION
CLASSIFIERS
AUTOM ATIC
CLASSIFICATIO
N
Fig. 1. Block diagram of project process flow
A. EEG Dataset
The normal and epileptic subjects were the two sets of
EEG data used as the experimental data set in this work. These
data sets were widely used in the literature. The first set of
EEG data corresponds to normal subjects is taken from the
surface of EEG recordings from five healthy relaxed and
awaken state subjects with eyes open. The next step is to
obtain the epileptic EEG signal taken from five different
epileptic patients, recorded during the occurrence of the
epileptic seizures from intracranial electrodes. The time series
of the acquisition system have the spectral bandwidth which
ranges from 0.5 to 85 Hz. Then the data is written
continuously after a 12-bit analog-to-digital conversion at a
sampling rate of 173.61 Hz with band pass filter settings (12
dB / octave).
B. Feature Extraction
The obtained EEG signal is decomposed based on five
frequency sub bands: delta (0 – 4 Hz), theta (4 – 8 Hz), alpha
(8 – 13 Hz), beta (13 – 30 Hz), and gamma (30 – 60 Hz). The
decomposed signal is with frequency band 0 – 86.8 Hz
according to the physiological aspects whereas, frequencies
greater than 60 Hz are considered as noise and can be
neglected [9]. The MATLAB application is used to extract and
determine the features from the various types of
electroencephalography (EEG) signals.
The selected features are bispectral entropy (Ent1),
bispectral squared entropy (Ent2), bispectrum phase entropy
(EntPh), mean bispectrum magnitude (mAmp), and weighted
center of bispectrum (wc1, wc2, wc3 and wc4), shown in Fig. 2.
The features are inputs that fed into the different classifiers to
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perform automatic classification known as Normal,
Background (Pre-ictal) and Epilepsy (ictal).
Fig. 2. Samples of EEG signal (a) Normal (b) Epileptic.
III. HIGHER ORDER SPECIAL FEATURES
The nature of the EEG signals is highly dynamic and
non-linear [20]. For the past 3 decades, many papers mention
about performing quantitative analysis to aid the interpretation
of EEG. In the mid 80’s, Lyapunov exponents and correlation
dimension study is carried out, a non-linear method to learn
slow wave sleep signal [3,4]. Since then, non-linear analysis
methods gained the interest of many researchers and several
possible clinical applications like seizures predictions were
reported. Signal processing methods differentiate the
neurological activities between an abnormal and healthy
individual. Various measurement techniques such as time-
domain, frequency domain, time-frequency and non-linear
methodologies were also discussed [20]. Recently, HOS
analysis has gained its popularity due to its advantages. The
advantages are high signal to noise ratio (SNR) due to
elimination of Gaussian noise which is good for parameter
estimation. The signal phase properties and magnitude of
the time series signal during reproduction of the signal in
frequency is preserved. Lastly, HOS has the ability to
differentiate various non-Gaussian signals for more accurate
identification.
Spectra analysis is a detail examination of information in
frequency domain using statistical method. The information
can be obtained from images, sound and other time-variant
measurement data collected from sensors. The data will be
processed using mathematical operation like Fourier
Transform (FT) to obtain the relevant distinct features that can
only be found in frequency domain [5-8]. This methodology is
signal processing.
Statistical tool is chosen, as the data obtained is usually
random, nonlinear and has a normal distribution. It is common
to see second order statistics is being used to interpret the
collected data. However, higher order that is third order
statistics has gain popularity due to more complete
characterization of the signal [12-19].
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 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)

This project focuses on third order statistical analysis

features using bispectrum as in Fig. 3. Bispectrum is the study
of nonlinear interactions and the equation is shown below
where X (f) is a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of x (nT). E
[.] is the expected value operator.
0.5
B ( f 1 , f 2 )  E  X  f 1  X  f 2  X   f 1  f 2  (1)
f2
Equation (1) is derived from third order cumulant of the signal Non-
using DFT. Normalizing bispectrum using power spectra redundant
which lead to bicoherence and given by Region

E  X  f 1  X  f 2  X   f 1  f 2  0.5 1
B norm ( f 1 , f 2 ) 
(2)
P  f 1 P ( f 2 ) P ( f 1  f 2 )
f1
Where P(f) is the power spectra.
Fig. 3. Real Signals Computation at Non-redundant Region

A. Features Extracted
In this study, seven features were being extracted to F. Mean bispectrum magnitude:
differentiate EEG signals. The bispectral entropies are shown
1 (7)
in (3), (4) and (5). mAmp   
B f1 , f 2
L
B. Normalized bispectral entropy (Ent1):
Where B  f1 , f 2  is the bispectrum of the signal

Ent 1    p n log p n Where G. Mean bispectrum magnitude:

( wc 1  wc )
n

B  f1 , f 2  (3)
pn 
 
B  f1 , f 2  wcx 
 
iB ( i , j )
,
 
B (i, j )
C. Normalized bispectral squared entropy (Ent2):
wcy 
 
iB ( i , j ) (8)
 
B (i, j )
Ent 2    q n log q n
Where
n hence,
B  f1 , f 2  (4)  iB ( i , j )
2

qn  wc 1 

, wc 
 
iB ( i , j )
and
B  f1 , f 2 
2
  
2


B (i, j ) 
B (i, j )

D. Normalized bispectral cubed entropy (Ent3):  

wc 

iB ( i , j )
, wc 

iB ( i , j )
respectively
 
3 4

B (i, j ) 
B (i, j )

Ent 3    rn log rn Where

n
H. Moments of bispectrum ( H 1  H 5 ):
B  f1 , f 2 
3
(5)
rn  The summation of the logarithmic amplitudes of H1
B  f1 , f 2 
3
 
bispectrum is equated as:
E. Bispectrum phase entropy (EntPh): H1   
log  B  f 1 , f 2   (9)
EntPh   p  n log p  n (6)
n

Where 1 The summation of the logarithmic amplitudes of the diagonal

p n 
L
 
1 bf 1 , f 2   n
elements in the H2 bispectrum is equated as:
H 2    log  B  f k , f k   (10)

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 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)

The first order spectral moment of amplitudes of diagonal
elements of the bispectrum H3 is equated as:
H 3    log  B  f k , f k   (11)
IV. TYPES OF CLASSIFIERS
A. Probabilistic Neural network (PNN)
PNN is a feed forward network consists of three layers,
namely input layers, hidden layers and output layers. It is
derived from Bayes Theorem. Donald Specht replaced
sigmoid activation function with a derived statistical activation
function [21]. The main advantage of using PNN is the
computational speed where it can be used on real-time
classification comparing to typical back propagation neural
networks. Moreover, it has the flexibility of choosing between
linear decision probability density function (PDF) and
complex nonlinear P.
B. K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN)
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The result of the extracted features Ent1, Ent2, EntPh
signify the complication or abnormality of EEG signal that
occurs during epilepsy is reduced. The statistical analysis of
these measurements is extremely statistically significant with
p<0.0001.
Due to the random and non-linear characteristic of brain
signals, statistical analysis is being employed. The features are
being tested using ANOVA method to choose the statistical
significant features to be fed to various classifiers. Eight
features which have p-value less than 0.0001 are chosen.
The classifiers namely, Probabilistic Neural Networks
(PNN), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), Support vector machine
and Decision Tree (DT) are being tested against four
performance parameters. SVM classifier scores better
performance and accuracy when compared to other classifiers
moreover Fuzzy and SVM showed comparable performance.
It is proven the entropies estimators, phase entropy and
weighted centers can be used to identify epilepsy.
TABLE I. CLASSIFIERS PERFORMANCE OUTCOME

The K-nearest-neighbour (KNN) algorithm measures the Classifiers PNN KNN DT SVM
distance between a query scenario and a set of scenarios in the
data set and it is a memory based learning technique used to TN 28 28 28 60
classify samples based on the closest training samples exist in FN 1 1 2 1
the n-dimensional space. It does not perform comparison with TP 59 59 58 59
trained models for classification. A user defined constant, k is FP 2 2 2 1
used to determine the test samples belong to which class based
Accuracy (%) 96 96 95 98
on majority votes. Typically, k is a small positive integer
value [22]. PPV (%) 96 96 96 98
Sensitivity (%) 98 98 96 98

C. Decision Tree (DT) Specificity (%) 93 93 93 98

Decision tree is a simplified model to predict the outcome

base on the inputs. The inputs formed the tree structure. DT
can learn through recursive partitioning method. The learning
phase is considered complete when all partition nodes have the
same value as the target variables. Decision trees are
powerful and popular tools for classification and prediction.
D. Support Vector Machine (SVM)
The Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm is
probably the most widely used kernel learning algorithm. In
many classification applications, Support Vector Machines
(SVMs) have proven to be highly performing and easy to
handle classifiers with very good generalization abilities.
SVM have several applications like handwriting recognition
3D object recognition, speaker identification, face detection,
text categorization, and bio-informatics
VI. CONCLUSION
EEG signal obtained from human brain provided
neurological behavior information. Various researches have
been done to dissect the EEG signal to understand the
difference between normal EEG, background EEG and
epilepsy EEG signals. This study has shown that nonlinear
time series analytical methods like entropies, entropies phase
and weight centers can be used to distinguish between normal
EEG and epilepsy EEG. It is clear to observe that entropies
and weight centers are high for normal EEG compared to
epileptic EEG. Through this work, HOS is proven to deliver
significant features to the classifiers.
For future work, more advance identification
algorithm can be used such as fuzzy neural networks to
perform classification. Encouraging results can be found from
stocks trading applications, traffic prediction application [23]
and bank failure prediction]. Moreover, it can be use for
diagnose epilepsy at a very early stage. It can be implemented
real time for diagnosing the Pre-ictal EEG Signal. It can also
be further extend to other clinical diseases such as depression,

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 2014 International Conference on Control, Instrumentation, Communication and Computational Technologies (ICCICCT)
schizophrenia, and stroke patients and for different cardiac
vascular diseases [24]. This concept can also diagnose the
efficacy of the drug; to check if the drug is efficient to cure
epilepsy.
Fig. 4.(a) Normalized bispectral entropy (Ent1)
Fig. 4.(b) Normalized bispectral squared entropy (Ent2)
Fig. 4.(c) Bispectrum Phase entropy (Entph)
Fig. 4.(d) Mean Bispectrum Magnitude (mAmp)
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Fig. 4.(e) Weighted Bispectrum (WC)
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