Identification of TLE Focus from EEG Signals by Using Deep Learning Approach

Temporal lobe epilepsy, a neurological disease that causes seizures as a result of excessive neural activities in the brain, is the most common type of focal seizure, accounting for 30–35% of all epilepsies. Detection of epilepsy and localization of epileptic focus are essential for treatment planning and epilepsy surgery. Currently, epileptic focus is decided by expert physician by examining the EEG records and determining EEG channel where epileptic patterns begins and continues intensely during seizure. Examination of long EEG recordings is very time-consuming process, requires attention and decision can vary depending on physician. In this study, to assist physicians in detecting epileptic focus side from EEG recordings, a novel deep learning-based computer-aided diagnosis system is presented. In the proposed framework, ictal epochs are detected using long short-term memory network fed with EEG subband features obtained by discrete wavelet transform, and then, epileptic focus identification is realized by using asymmetry score. This algorithm was tested on EEG database obtained from the Ankara University hospital. Experimental results showed ictal and interictal epochs were classified with accuracy of 86.84%, sensitivity of 86.96% and specificity of 89.68% on Ankara University hospital dataset, and 96.67% success rate was obtained on Bonn EEG dataset. In addition, epileptic focus was identified with accuracy of 96.10%, sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 93.80% by using the proposed deep learning-based algorithm and university hospital dataset. These results showed that proposed method can be used properly in clinical applications, epilepsy treatment and surgical planning as a medical decision support system.