Development of a Wearable Inertial System for Motor Epileptic Seizure Detection

Epilepsy is one of the most common and severe neurological disorders. Despite the availability of numerous antiepileptic drugs, it is often impossible to control the disease effectively. During and after seizure episodes lack of supervision and failure to provide urgent medical care may lead to a serious injury or even death. Therefore, developing a wearable device for epilepsy monitoring may complete the anamnesis, helping medical staff in diagnosing and treatment process, and also prevent seizure-related accidents. The only reliable method for verifying epileptic seizures is electro-encephalography. But it is currently impractical for ambulatory monitoring. Therefore wearable devices developers focus primarily on indirect seizure detection methods. There are a number of seizure detection systems available on the market. Still their performance is far from perfect. This study describes a wearable device which is designed to address some issues with current seizure detection systems. Its functional block diagram and operating modes are detailed. Possible application areas of the device are also discussed.