Performance Analysis of Entropy Methods in Detecting Epileptic Seizure from Surface Electroencephalograms

Physiological signals like Electrocardiography (ECG) and Electroencephalography (EEG) are complex and nonlinear in nature. To retrieve diagnostic information from these, we need the help of nonlinear methods of analysis. Entropy estimation is a very popular approach in the nonlinear category, where entropy estimates are used as features for signal classification and analysis. In this study, we analyze and compare the performances of four entropy methods; namely Distribution entropy (DistEn), Shannon entropy (ShanEn), Renyi entropy (RenEn) and LempelZiv complexity (LempelZiv) as classification features to detect epileptic seizure (ES) from surface Electroencephalography (sEEG) signal. Experiments were conducted on sEEG data from 23 subjects, obtained from the CHB-MIT database of PhysioNet. ShanEn, RenEn and LempelZiv entropy are found to be potential features for accurate and consistent detection of ES from sEEG, across multiple channels and subjects.

I. Introduction

Like brain cancer, Alzheimer’s, stroke, and dementia, epilepsy is considered as one of the major brain diseases that affect the Central Nervous System resulting in seizure episodes from uncontrolled brain activity. About 65 million people around the globe suffer from this dangerous disorder. Surface electroencephalography (sEEG) is the most popularly used method for the diagnosis of epileptic seizures (ES).