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https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-018-4075-z (0123456789().,-volV)(0123456789().
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TECHNICAL PAPER

Detection of major depressive disorder using linear and non-linear

features from EEG signals
Shalini Mahato1 • Sanchita Paul1

Received: 14 May 2018 / Accepted: 27 July 2018

 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
EEG signals are non-stationary, complex and non-linear signals. During major depressive disorder (MDD) or depression,
any deterioration in the brain function is reflected in the EEG signals. In this paper, linear features (band power, inter
hemispheric asymmetry) and non-linear features [relative wavelet energy (RWE) and wavelet entropy (WE)] and com-
bination of linear and non-linear features were used to classify depression patients and healthy individuals. In this analysis
the data set used is publicly available data set contributed by Mumtaz et al. (Biomed Signal Process Control 31:108–115,
2017b). The dataset consisted of 34 MDD patients and 30 healthy individuals. The classifiers used were multi layered
perceptron neural network (MLPNN), radial basis function network (RBFN), linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and
quadratic discriminant analysis. When linear feature was used, highest classification accuracy of 91.67% was obtained by
alpha power with MLPNN classifier. When non-linear feature was used, both RWE and WE provided highest classification
accuracy of 90% with RBFN and LDA classifier, respectively. The highest classification of 93.33% was achieved when
combining linear and non-linear feature, i.e., combination alpha power and RWE with MLPNN as well as RBFN classifier.
This paper also showed that the combination of non-linear features, i.e., RWE and WE also performed the best with highest
classification accuracy of 93.33%. The study compared the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of different classifiers along
with linear and non-linear features and combination of both. The results indicated that combination alpha power and RWE
showed the highest classification 93.33% accuracy in all the applied classifiers.

1 Introduction They generally face hindrance in social acceptability, suf-

Over the years MDD has transformed into a major cause of
disability around the world in terms of years lived with
disability. The rate of people affected by MDD has grown
up to 20% in the last decade with a ratio 1:1.5 for males as
compared to females. More than 300 million people across
the globe carry the burden of this disease and it is antici-
pated by World Health Organization (WHO) that by 2030,
MDD will become the major cause of disease burden.
An individual suffering from MDD exhibits severe lack
of interest in usual activities and pleasure. This is accom-
panied with four additional symptoms of depression
namely feeling restless and agitated, being tired and
unenergetic, feeling worthless or guilty and having suicidal
tendency, etc., for a sustained period of at least 2 weeks.
& Shalini Mahato
swarup.shalini@gmail.com
1
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Birla
Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi 835215, India
fer from lack of personal esteem and exhibit decline in
performance at work front. In worst case depression
patients tend to commit suicide. Due to inappropriate
diagnosis, dearth of trained medical personnel, inadequate
facilities and social disrepute only half of the patients end
up getting proper treatment. Sometimes it may happen that
person suffering from depression goes undiagnosed while
an unaffected person is wrongly identified and prescribed
antidepressant.
The major reason behind inappropriate diagnosis of
MDD is because of absence of any accepted biomarkers.
Diagnosis of depression is done on the basis of accepted
depression classification criteria (Cusin et al. 2009) like
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-fifth
edition (DSM-V), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and
Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) which
depends on certain questionnaire and observed behavior
during the interview session between the MDD patient and
health practitioner.

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MDD causes degradation in brain’s performance which
is expected to be reflected in the bioelectrical activity of the
brain. Screening of brain under these conditions with the
help of EEG can be helpful in understanding the brain
functioning and imbalance of brain activity. EEG is cost
effective and also easily available. The time scale of EEG
is in milli-seconds which is also same as that of neural
activity thus giving better temporal resolution.
Manual interpretation of the EEG signals is very com-
plicated as the EEG signals are extremely intricate, non-
stationary and non-linear. So computer aided signal pro-
cessing becomes necessary to automatically classify MDD
patients and healthy individuals.
Extensive research has been done using different EEG
features and classifiers to improve the prediction accuracy
of MDD patients.
It was found that during neuro-feedback treatment,
alpha asymmetry decreases remarkably in MDD patients
especially in women (Bruder et al. 2012). Frontal alpha
asymmetry was found to be higher in MDD patients and
found to be positively correlated with inhibitory behavior
before treatment (Gollan et al. 2014). Higher classification
accuracy in classifying depression and healthy individuals
was achieved by alpha band power as compared to all the
bands that were analyzed together (Hosseinifarda et al.
2013; Mohammadi et al. 2015). During depression, high
alpha activity was found in the posterior region of the brain
in resting state (Stewart et al. 2014; Grin-Yatsenko et al.
2010). EEG power was found to be increased in central,
occipital, parietal and posterior temporal areas in patients
in the early stage of depression (Grin-Yatsenko et al.
2010). It was found that any of the hemispheres could be
affected in depression but mainly abnormal sources were
found in the right hemisphere (Ricardo-Garcel et al. 2010).
WE and approximate entropy was found to be higher in
healthy individuals than MDD patients (Puthankattil and
Joseph 2014).
RWE for 4–32 Hz was found to be higher for healthy
individuals than MDD patients in left hemisphere while
RWE for 0–4 Hz was found to be higher for MDD patients
in right hemisphere of the brain (Puthankattil and Joseph
2012). It was found that MDD patient’s beta power
increased only for left hemisphere (Grin-Yatsenko et al.
2010; Mumtaz et al. 2017a, b). It was also found that beta
power was higher in central, temporal and parietal region
of brain for MDD patients (Mumtaz et al. 2017a, b). In a
study it was found that while listening to music frontal
theta asymmetry was found to be decreased in MDD
patients while frontal theta asymmetry was found to be
increased in healthy individuals (Dharmadhikari et al.
2018).
Classification accuracy of 80% was obtained using EEG
band power as feature and decision tree as classifier
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(Mohammadi et al. 2015). Wavelet transform features
when used in logistic regression (LR) provided a classifi-
cation accuracy of 87.5% (Mumtaz et al. 2017a, b). LDA
along with detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and
Spectral Asymmetric Index (SASI) provided an accuracy
of 91.2% (Bachmann et al. 2017). LR, LDA and k-nearest
neighbor (KNN) along with four non-linear features, i.e.,
DFA, Higuchi’s fractal dimension (HFD), correlation
dimension (CD) and Lyapunov exponent (LE) provided an
accuracy of 90, 86.6 and 80%, respectively. Both LR and
LDA provided an accuracy of 73.3% while KNN provided
an accuracy of 70% when alpha power was used as a
feature (Hosseinifarda et al. 2013). Both SASI and HFD
provided a classification accuracy of 85% using statistical
t test (Bachmann et al. 2013).
The purpose of this paper is to compare the efficiency of
linear features (band power and asymmetry), nonlinear
features (WE and RWE) and combination of linear and
non-linear features using different classifier (MLPNN,
RBFN, LDA, QDA) for detection of MDD.
2 Materials and methods
At first features are extracted from the EEG signals of 30
MDD patients and 30 healthy individuals. The study is
basically divided into three parts based on type of feature
sets used. Three types of feature sets have been used: eight
linear feature sets (Four band power and four correspond-
ing hemispheric asymmetry), two non-linear feature sets
(RWE and WE) and six combinations of linear and non-
linear feature sets.
The linear feature sets for band power consisted of
19 9 1 equal to 19 features.
The non-linear feature sets consisted of 19 9 4 equal to
76 features. The high dimensionality of non-linear feature
sets is reduced by dimension reduction with the help of
principal component analysis (PCA).
For combination feature sets, whenever the combination
is with non-linear features dimension reduction is done
with the help of PCA. Subsequently for each feature sets
four types of classifiers are applied, i.e., MLPNN, RBFN,
LDA and QDA. Here, Fig. 1 represents the block diagram
of the proposed model for detection of MDD patients.
2.1 Subjects
The EEG signal data set which has been used is publically
available data contributed by Mumtaz et al. (2017b). The
data sets consist of EEG signal of 34 MDD patients and 30
healthy individuals. The group of 34 MDD patients con-
sists of 17 male and 17 female patients with average age of
40.3 ± 12.9 years. Out of 34 MDD patients EEG signal,
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reference (Dien 1998). The sampling frequency was set to

256 Hz. All the signals were high pass filtered with 0.5 Hz
cut-off and low pass filtered with 70 Hz cut-off frequency.
50 Hz notch filter was used to remove line noise.

2.3 EEG pre-processing

During EEG recording the EEG signal gets contaminated

by various unwanted artifacts such as eye blink, muscle
activity, movements and electrical noise from the power
line.
Thus EEG pre-processing is essential to remove these
unwanted signals (Jung et al. 2000; Delorme and Makeig
2004; Jung et al. 1998; Joyce et al. 2003).
For removing the background noise re-reference to
common average reference (CAR) was done (Gandhi
2014). As the analysis needs to be done in the signal
between 0.5 and 32 Hz, the signal was high pass filtered
with 0.5 Hz cut off frequency and low pass filtered with
32 Hz cut off frequency. Since signals for most of the
muscle artifacts and power line noise lie above 32 Hz,
these artifacts are automatically removed by this process.
Other muscle artifacts like eye blinks and eye movement
artifacts are removed visually with the help of independent
component analysis (ICA) (Delorme and Makeig 2004).
ICA is based on blind source separation used recover
independent source signals and can easily and efficiently
remove artifacts.
All the signal analysis was done using Matlab software
along with EEGLAB.

Fig. 1 Block diagram representation of the steps involved in the

classification of MDD patients and healthy individuals

30 EEG signal has been used in this study. The healthy

individuals consisted of age matched 21 males and 9
females with the average age of 38.3 ± 15.6 years.
The MDD patients were diagnosed on the basis of DSM-
IV criteria (American Psychiatric Association 1994).
Human Ethics committee of Hospital Universitii Sains
Malaysia (HUSM), Malaysia has given acceptance to the
above study.

2.2 EEG data acquisition

The EEG data was recorded for 5 min eyes closed (EC)
condition in resting position. The data was recorded with
19 electrodes based on international standard 10/20 system.
The 19 electrodes covered the frontal (Fp1, Fp2, F3, F4,
F7, F8, Fz), temporal (T3, T4, T5, T6), parietal (P3, P4,
Pz), occipital (O1, O2) central (C3, C4, Cz) as shown in
Fig. 2. The data was recorded using linked ear (LE)
Fig. 2 International 10/20 system for electrode positioning

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2.4 Feature extraction
The feature extracted from the EEG signal can mainly be
divided into two categories: linear analysis and non-linear
analysis.
Frequency analysis (e.g. Fourier transform) and para-
metric modeling (auto regressive models) falls under linear
analysis. Linear methods include band power, Interhemi-
spheric asymmetry, EEG measurements (amplitude, fre-
quency, power) and so on. Linear methods have been
applied in a number of studies relating to EEG signal and
have provided good results but it fails to capture the
underlying complex and chaotic behavior of brain signals.
Non-linear methods have the ability to capture the
chaotic behavior and abrupt changes in EEG signal due to
underlying physiological phenomenon occurring in the
brain (Rodreguez-Bermudez and Garcia-Laencina 2015).
Non-linear methods include relative wavelet energy
(RWE), wavelet entropy, approximate entropy (ApEn),
Higuchi’s fractal dimension (HFD), correlation dimension
(CD), detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) and so on.
In this paper, linear as well as non-linear methods have
been used. Linear methods used are band power and
interhemispheric asymmetry. Non-linear methods used are
RWE and WE.
2.4.1 Band power
In this method, the four frequency band: delta (0.5–4 Hz),
theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (13–30 Hz) are
extracted from EEG. Welch periodogram was applied to
compute the power spectrum of EEG signal. In this
method, the signal is divided into small segments with 50%
overlap. The average of all modified periodogram is taken
which gives the signal power of each band.
2.4.2 Interhemispheric asymmetry
The difference in EEG signal power of left half of the brain
and right half of the brain can be represented by inter
hemispheric asymmetry. It can be obtained by subtracting
the natural logarithm of the power of the left half of brain
from the natural logarithm power of the right half of the
brain. Positive value represents higher activity of right
hemisphere while negative value represents relatively
higher activity of left hemisphere. It can be represented as
Asym ¼ meanðlogðPoWR Þ  logðPoWL ÞÞ ð1Þ
where PoWR represents the summation of power of right
electrodes and PoWL represents the summation of power of
left electrodes.
Interhemispheric asymmetry corresponding to delta
power is delta asymmetry, for alpha power is termed as
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alpha interhemispheric asymmetry, for theta power is ter-
med as theta asymmetry, for beta power is termed as beta
asymmetry. In this analysis, interhemispheric asymmetry
was calculated for each pair of channels, i.e.,
Fp2Fp1; F4F3; F8F7; C4C3;
T4T3; P4P3; T6T5; O2O1
2.4.3 Wavelet transform: non-linear features
For non-linear feature extraction, wavelet transform (WT)
of the signal is done. Wavelet transform at low frequency
gives good frequency information and at high frequency
gives good time information. Wavelet transform provides
time frequency localization (Mallat 1989; Bopardikar and
Rao 1998). Wavelets are simple oscillatory function of
fixed duration which by translation and dilation can create
any signal. CWT of finite energy function x(t) w.r.t to
mother wavelet ws;d ðtÞ is represented as
Z1
Ycwt ðs; dÞ ¼ xðtÞws;d ðtÞdt ð2Þ
1
where,
 
1 td
ws;d ðtÞ ¼ pffiffiffiffiffi w ð3Þ
jsj s
where, t is the time and s, d are the scaling and translation
variable, respectively. Example of wavelets are Morlet
wavelet, Coiflet and Haar.
CWT provides information which is highly redundant
and requires more computation time and resource. This
problem is solved by discrete wavelet transform
(DWT).
In DWT, discrete values for translational and scaling are
used which is given by:
s ¼ sm m
0 and d ¼ nd0 s0
where, m and n are integers.
Thus, we get:
m=2
wm;n ðtÞ ¼ s0 wðsm
0 n  nd0 Þ ð4Þ
where, m indicates frequency localization and n indicates
time localization.
In DWT, high frequencies are analyzed using a series of
high pass filters and the low frequencies are analyzed using
a series of low pass filters. Quadrature mirror filters (QMF)
are pairs of finite impulse response (FIR) filters used in
WT. The low and high frequency are separated by two FIR.
The low pass filter output is fed to input of another QMF
filter pair. The procedure is repeated which creates a
hierarchal structure. Wavelet function is related to high
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pass filter and scaling function is related to low pass filter. 2.4.5 Wavelet entropy (WE)
Information of the wavelet coefficient is organized in a
multi resolution scheme represented as a hierarchal Information contained in each level of decomposition can
scheme. be represented as wavelet entropy (Rosso et al. 2006).
To obtain the original signal inverse filtering opera- Shanon entropy forms the basis of wavelet entropy.
tion is done. Output of low pass filter is called approx- The equation for calculation of Wavelet Entropy (WE)
imate (A) and output of the high pass filter is called is:
details (D). X
N
In this paper, three level decomposition using Coiflet 5 Ent ¼  RWEk logðRWEk Þ ð8Þ
was used as shown in Fig. 3. j¼1

where, j = 1,2, …, N is wavelet decomposition level.

2.4.4 Relative wavelet energy (RWE)
2.5 Feature reduction
Relative energy associated with wavelet coefficient at
each resolution level is defined as RWE (Rosso et al.
When a large number of features are used for classification
2006).
by the classifier, it leads to high computational cost as well
Representation of energy at the kth resolution level (1,
as reduction in efficiency. In such situations, feature
2,…, N) is represented as:
reduction becomes necessary.
X 2
EDk ¼ Dk;l  ð5Þ For linear feature analysis, feature set of 19 features
l were used, i.e., 1 feature for each channel location. Each
row in the data matrix represents the subject and each
where, k = 1, 2, …, N, andand Dk,l is the wavelet co-
column represents an attribute.
efficient.
But for non-linear feature analysis, we have 76 features
Total energy is represented as:
(19 9 4). So it is necessary to reduce the dimensionality.
X
N
For dimensional reduction PCA was used (Jolliffe 2002).
Etotal ¼ EDk ð6Þ Feature reduction is a necessary step here since it is a high
k¼1
dimension feature matrix. Feature reduction improves the
RWE can be represented as performance of classifier when we have high dimension
EDk matrix.
RWEk ¼ ð7Þ In PCA, dimensional reduction is done by representing
Etotal
d-dimensional data in a lower dimensional space without
much loss of information. For less loss of information,
variables with low variance are removed. PCA is a form of
unsupervised learning. Maximum variance of data is rep-
resented by first principal component, second principal
component represents the second largest variance till kth
principal components, where k is the dimension of the
reduced space. The principal components are uncorrelated
and orthonormal. For finding the principal component first
d 9 d covariance matrix is calculated from d-dimensional
mean adjusted vector. Eigen vector and eigen value are
calculated for the covariance matrix and arranged in the
decreasing order of eigen value (k1, k2, …, kd). The eigen
vector corresponding to maximum eigen value represents
the first principal component and it has maximum variance.
The values of eigen vector and eigen values are computed
by solving the following equation.
X
EigV ¼ kEigV ð9Þ

where, EigVPrepresent eigen vectors and k represent eigen

values and represent covariance matrix.
Feature vector is formed from the selected eigen vectors.
Fig. 3 3-level multi resolution decomposition of EEG signal

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Feature Vector ¼ ðeig1 ; eig2 . . .eigd Þ
To get the final reduced dataset the following equation is
used
FinalDataSet ¼ RowFeatureVector
 RowMeanAdjustData ð10Þ
where, RowFeatureVector represents the Eigen Vector in
row in descending order of their eigen values.
RowMeanAdjustData represents the mean adjusted data
where each row hold separate dimension
The reduced dimension k should be selected such that
90–95% of total variance is represented.
Pk
ki
V ¼ Pi¼1
d
 0:9or0:95 ð11Þ
j¼1 kj
2.6 Classifier model
2.6.1 Multi layer perceptron neural network (MLPNN)
MLPNN (Haykin 2009) is a type of neural network model
which uses supervised learning. Mainly it is a feed forward
network trained with back propagation. It consists of 1
input layer, 1 output layer and more than one hidden layers.
Linear transfer function is used in the input layer and non-
linear transfer functions like sigmoidal function are used
for the output layer and hidden layers.
Each node in the input layer represents one attribute.
The neurons of the input layer, hidden layer and output
layer are connected by links which consists of some
weight. All the complex computations are done in the
hidden layers.
The algorithm comprises of two steps: forward pass and
backward pass. During the forward pass the input is feed to
the network which propagates through the network and
produces an output. Here no change in synaptic weight is
done. Then the actual output is subtracted from the target
output to generate an error signal. Based on the error signal
the synaptic weights are adjusted during the backward pass.
The weights are adjusted in such a way that the error
decreases. This process is repeated a number of times until
a fixed number of iteration or the error become less than the
tolerance value.
2.6.2 Radial basis function network (RBFN)
RBFN (Haykin 2009) is a form of artificial neural network
model. It consists of only three layers: input layer, strictly
one hidden layer, output layer. In RBFN, dimension of
feature vector is increased. If the dimensionality of feature
vector is increased, the complex classification problem
which is non-linearly separable in lower dimensional space
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may become linearly separable in higher dimensional
space.
The hidden layers perform non-linear transformation by
using Radial Basis Function. The output layer uses linear
transformation.
Each node in hidden layer is mathematically represented
by a radial basis function. Radial basis function is defined
as
 
/j ðxÞ ¼ / x  xj  ð12Þ
where, j = 1, 2,…, N and xj defines the center of the radial
basis function.
Generally, Gaussian radial function is used for the
computation in the hidden layer nodes which is defined as
/j ðxÞ ¼ /ðx  xj Þ
!
1  2 ð13Þ
¼ exp  2 x  xj 
2rj
where, j = 1,2,…, N.
The training of RBFN is divided into two stages:
(i) Training of the hidden layer nodes. (ii) Training of the
weight vector between the hidden layer and output layer.
In the first stage either random subset selection or
clustering algorithm (like k-means) is used to determine the
location and width of the localized basis function. Once
basis function parameter is fixed, the first phase is
completed.
In the second phase of training, updation of weight
vector between hidden layer and output layer is done with
the help of Least Mean Square algorithm.
The output unit consists of one node per class. Each
output node calculates a score for each associated class by
weighted sum of activation from each node in the hidden
layer. Every output unit has its own set of weight to cal-
culate the score for each class. The classification decision
is made on the basis of the output class which got the
highest score.
2.6.3 Linear discriminant analysis (LDA)
LDA (Fisher’s Linear Discriminant) is a form of supervised
learning. In LDA linear combination of variables are
searched that best separates two classes (Bishop 2006;
James 2013; Tharwat 2016). In this method a new
dimension is picked such that separation of the means of
projected classes is maximum and variances within the
projected classes are minimum. This is said to be the
Fisher’s criteria which can be determined as the ratio of
between class variance to within class variance. Fisher’s
criteria is defined as
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ðl2  l1 Þ2
J¼ ð14Þ
r2 þ r1
where, l1 and l2 are mean vectors of two classes and r1
and r2 are the corresponding variances.
LDA classification can be done on the basis of Baye’s
Theorem. A test sample x is said to belong to class k for
which discriminant functions dk ðxÞ is maximum.
X where TP is the number of MDD patients detected cor-
1 1
dk ðxÞ ¼ xT lk  lTk lk þ log pk ð15Þ
2 healthy individuals, TP is the number of MDD patients
P
where represents covariance matrix, lk represents mean
of kth class and r2 the corresponding variance. In the
equation is pk defined as
pk ¼ nk =n
where, n represents total number of observations and nk
represents the number of samples belonging to k class.
2.6.4 Quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA)
The decision boundary of QDA is non-linear (James 2013;
Tharwat 2016). QDA is very similar to LDA except that in
LDA the covariance are assumed to be same for each
classes but in QDA each class has its own co variance
matrix.
LDA classification can be done on the basis of Baye’s
Theorem. A test sample x is said to belong to class k for
which discriminant functions dk ðxÞ is maximum.
1 X
1
dk ðxÞ ¼  ðx  lk Þ2 ðx  lk Þ
2 k
  ð16Þ
1 X
 log  þ log pk
2  k 
P
where k represents covariance matrix of class k.
When the covariance matrix of each of the classes is
equal then LDA performs better than QDA but when the
covariance matrix differs QDA performs better than LDA.
2.7 Validation
The classifiers performance was evaluated using tenfold
cross validation for 100 iterations. In this method the data
set is divided into ten equal size segments. Each nine
segments are randomly selected for training and one seg-
ment is selected for testing. Validation is done in order to
validate the model on different data set other than the
training data set which was used for parameter estimation
of the model.
Accuracy, sensitivity and specificity are calculated on
the basis of confusion matrix
TP
Sensitivity ¼ ð17Þ
ðTP þ FNÞ
TN
Specificity ¼ ð18Þ
ðTN þ FPÞ
no: of correct decisions
Accuracy ¼ ð19Þ
total no: of cases
rectly, FN is the number of MDD patients detected as
detected correctly, FN is the number of MDD patients
detected as healthy individuals, TN is the number of
healthy individuals detected correctly, and FP is the num-
ber of healthy individuals detected as MDD patients.
3 Experimental results
3.1 Results for classification based on linear
methods
3.1.1 Band power
Figure 4 shows that among all the band powers alpha
power shows the highest accuracy of 91.67% in MLPNN.
The classification accuracy of all band powers is always
found to be lesser than the accuracy of alpha power in all
types of applied classifier.
3.1.2 Interhemispheric asymmetry
Figure 4 shows that alpha asymmetry has the highest
classification accuracy among all types of asymmetry in all
types of applied classifier. Highest classification accuracy
of 73.33% was shown in QDA for alpha asymmetry. Theta
asymmetry classification accuracy was also found to be at
par with alpha asymmetry. Highest classification accuracy
of theta asymmetry was found to be 71.67% in MLPNN.
Tables 1, 2, 3, 4 shows the performance of classifiers
MLPNN, RBFN, LDA, QDA respectively using linear
features (Band power & Interhemispheric Asymmetry)
only.
3.2 Results for classification based on non-linear
features
Figure 5 shows that on an average both RWE and WE has
good classification accuracy. RWE and WE both showed
the highest classification accuracy of 90% with RBFN and
LDA classifiers, respectively. Tables 5, 6, 7, 8 shows the
performance of classifiers MLPNN, RBFN, LDA, QDA
respectively using non-linear features (RWE & WE) only.
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Fig. 4 Comparison of
classification accuracy of linear
features

Table 1 MLPNN classifier’s performance for linear features Table 3 LDA classifier’s performance for linear features
Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)

Delta 83.33 93.33 73.33 Delta 73.33 66.67 80.00

Theta 86.67 83.33 90.00 Theta 80.00 70.00 90.00
Alpha 91.67 96.67 86.67 Alpha 86.67 83.33 90.00
Beta 81.67 80.00 83.33 Beta 78.33 76.67 80.00
All band power 80.00 83.33 76.67 All band power 83.33 77.78 85.19
Delta asymm 61.67 53.33 70.00 Delta asymm 48.33 46.67 50.00
Theta asymm 71.67 70.00 73.33 Theta asymm 61.67 63.33 60.00
Alpha asymm 71.67 80.00 63.33 Alpha asymm 61.67 63.33 60.00
Beta asymm 66.67 66.67 66.67 Beta asymm 70.00 60.00 80.00

Table 2 RBFN classifier’s performance for linear features Table 4 QDA classifier’s performance for linear features
Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)

Delta 71.67 70.00 73.33 Delta 73.33 90.00 56.67

Theta 85.00 86.67 83.33 Theta 71.67 86.67 56.67
Alpha 85.00 80.00 90.00 Alpha 81.67 93.33 70.00
Beta 78.33 80.00 76.67 Beta 70.00 53.33 53.33
All band power 80.00 76.67 83.33 All band power 73.33 93.33 53.33
Delta asymm 50.00 66.67 33.33 Delta asymm 65.00 60.00 70.00
Theta asymm 70.33 100.00 66.67 Theta asymm 73.33 63.33 83.33
Alpha asymm 66.67 100.00 33.33 Alpha asymm 73.33 66.67 80.00
Beta asymm 66.67 100.00 33.33 Beta asymm 76.67 70.00 83.33

3.3 Results for classification based
on combination of linear and non-linear
features
Figure 6 shows that highest classification accuracy of
93.33% was achieved by the combination of alpha power
(linear method) and RWE (non-linear method) in MLPNN,
RBFN and LDA. Combination of two non-linear features
(RWE and WE) also performed well in almost all applied
classifiers with highest classification accuracy of 93.33% in
LDA. Whenever the alpha asymmetry feature was com-
bined with the combination alpha power and RWE, accu-
racy degraded in all the classifier. Tables 9, 10, 11,
12 shows the performance of classifiers MLPNN, RBFN,

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Fig. 5 Comparison of
classification accuracy of non-
linear features

Table 5 MLPNN classifier’s performance for non-linear features Figure 7 compares the classification accuracy of
MLPNN, RBFN, LDA and QDA based on best performing
Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)
linear feature (alpha power) non-linear feature (WE) and
RWE 86.67 86.67 86.67 combination of linear and non-linear feature (alpha
WE 88.33 90.00 86.67 power ? WE). It shows that combination of alpha power
and WE features works the best in all types of applied
classifier.

Table 6 RBFN classifier’s performance for non-linear features

4 Discussion
Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)

RWE 90.00 83.33 96.67 Highest classification accuracy of 93.33% was achieved by
WE 83.33 73.33 93.33 combination of alpha power and WE features in MLPNN
and RBFN classifiers. The improvement in accuracy by
combination of linear and non-linear feature is because of
the fact that the new feature set can analyse the signal’s
frequency and time domain behavior as well as the chaotic
Table 7 LDA classifier’s performance for non-linear features
and complex behavior of the signal.
Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Combination of two non-linear features, i.e., WE and
RWE 86.67 80.00 93.33 RWE also provided the highest classification accuracy of
WE 90.00 83.33 96.67 91.67% using LDA classifier which is higher than accuracy
obtained by any non-linear feature alone in any of the
applied classifier. The improvement in the accuracy is due
to the fact that when combination of two non-linear fea-
tures is used more amount of complex and chaotic behavior
Table 8 QDA classifier’s performance for non-linear features
of brain signal is captured.
Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%) Hosseinifarda et al. (2013) got similar result with
accuracy of 90% by combination of four non-linear fea-
RWE 80.00 86.67 73.33
tures (DFA, HFD, CD and Lyapunov exponent) using
WE 85.00 93.33 76.67
logistic regression classifier.
Alpha band power provided the highest accuracy among
the entire power band showing that MDD patients and
healthy individuals more significantly differ in alpha band
LDA, QDA respectively using combination of linear and than in any other power band. Similar results were found in
non-linear features. literature (Hosseinifarda et al. 2013; Mohammadi et al.
On the basis of above results it can be concluded that 2015).
combination of RWE and alpha power gives the best result Table 13, compares the present study with existing
in all kind of classifier. algorithm (Mumtaz et al. 2017b) on the published dataset.

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Fig. 6 Comparison of
classification accuracy of
combination of linear and non-
linear features

Table 9 MLPNN classifier’s

Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)
performance for linear and non-
linear features Alpha power ? RWE 93.33 94.44 87.78
Alpha power ? RWE ? alpha asymm 90.00 93.33 86.67
Alpha power ? alpha asymm 83.33 66.67 100.00
RWE ? alpha asymm 88.33 83.33 93.33
RWE ? WE 90.00 90.00 90.00
WE ? alpha power 86.67 90.00 83.33

Table 10 RBFN classifier’s

Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)
performance for linear and non-
linear features Alpha power ? RWE 93.33 94.44 87.78
Alpha power ? RWE ? alpha_asymm) 85.00 76.67 93.33
Alpha_power ? alpha_asymm 83.33 75.00 91.66
RWE ? alpha_asymm 85.00 84.00 91.00
RWE ? WE 88.33 86.67 90.00
WE ? alpha_power 88.33 86.67 90.00

Table 11 LDA classifier’s

Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)
performance for linear and non-
linear features Alpha power ? RWE 90.00 83.33 96.67
alpha power ? RWE ? alpha_asymm 90.00 80.00 100.00
Alpha_power ? alpha_asymm 61.67 70.00 53.33
RWE ? alpha_asymm 88.33 83.33 93.33
RWE ? WE 93.33 86.67 88.24
WE ? alpha_power 91.67 83.33 100.00

Table 12 QDA classifier’s

Features Accuracy (%) Sensitivity (%) Specificity (%)
performance for linear and non-
linear features Alpha power ? RWE 86.67 93.33 80.00
Alpha power ? RWE ? alpha_asymm 85.00 93.33 76.67
Alpha_power ? alpha_asymm 80.00 73.33 86.67
RWE ? alpha_asymm 81.67 90.00 73.33
RWE ? WE 85.00 93.33 76.67
WE ? alpha_power 81.67 86.67 76.67

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Fig. 7 Comparison of
classification accuracy of
classifiers for the best
performing linear feature (alpha
power), non-linear feature (WE)
and combination of linear and
non-linear feature (alpha
power ? RWE)

Table 13 Comparative study with existing algorithm on the published data set
Paper name A wavelet-based technique to predict treatment outcome Detection of major depressive disorder using linear and non-
for major depressive disorder (Mumtaz et al. 2017a, b) linear features from EEG signal

Objective (i) Prediction of response of antidepressant’s treatment on Classification of MDD and healthy individuals based on
MDD patient using EEG signal EEG signal using different linear and non-linear features
(ii) Classification of MDD and healthy individuals based
on EEG signal
Features used EEG features computed with wavelet transform (WT) Linear features: band power and asymmetry
analysis, short-time Fourier transform (STFT) analysis, Nonlinear features: Relative Wavelet Energy (RWE),
and Empirical Mode decompositions (EMD) Wavelet Entropy(WE) and combination of linear and non-
linear features
Classifier used Logistic regression (LR) MLPNN, RBFN, LDA, QDA
Feature reduction (i) Rank-based feature selection method on the basis of Principal component analysis (PCA)
and selection receiver operating characteristic (ROC)
techniques used (ii) Minimum redundancy and maximum relevance
(mRMR) method
Results Highest classification accuracy was achieved with Highest classification accuracy was achieved with
combination wavelet, STFT and EMD features with combination alpha power and RWE in both MLPNN and
Rank Based selection technique RBFN using PCA for reduction
Accuracy: 90.5 ± 8.3% Accuracy: 93.33 ± 1.67%
Sensitivity: 91.6 ± 5.7% Sensitivity: 94.44 ± 3.68%
Specificity: 88.7 ± 7.5% Specificity: 87.78 ± 2.12%
https://figshare.com/articles/EEG-based_Diagnosis_and_Treatment_Outcome_Prediction_for_Major_Depressive_Disorder/3385168

Alpha asymmetry as well as theta asymmetry showed
good classification accuracy. A lot of study (Hinrikus et al.
2009; Ricardo-Garcel et al. 2010; Stewart et al. 2014;
Gollan et al. 2014) has been done in the field of alpha
asymmetry which shows its potential power for high pre-
diction accuracy.
But this study reveals the potential power of high pre-
diction accuracy of theta power which is an area of
research still needed to be explored.
In this study four classifiers: MLPNN, RBFN, LDA and
QDA have been used. Both MLPNN and RBFN performed
better than LDA and QDA in most of the cases. MLPNN
performs better than RBFN when the entire feature’s per-
formance is compared.
MLPNN gives good and reliable results due to its ability
to represent complex non-linear behavior of the problem.
This characteristic of MLPNN is mainly because of pres-
ence of one or more hidden layers with differentiable
activation function and the layers are highly connected.
MLPNN being a non-parametric model can capture more
minute details of the data which is helpful in predicting
future data.
Future research work would concentrate on the specific
regions of the brain which gets affected in depression. EEG

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signal of more number of MDD patient’s needs to be
analyzed so that the results could be generalized.
5 Conclusion
The study demonstrated that EEG signal can be effectively
used in discriminating between MDD patients and healthy
individuals. Combination of linear and non-linear feature
or combination of non-linear features is also an effective
way of increasing the accuracy of the classifier. Along with
alpha asymmetry, theta asymmetry can also be used for
diagnosis of depression. Among all the classifier, i.e.,
MLPNN, RBFN, LDA and QDA, MLPNN outperformed
all other classifiers in the given localized data set.
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