Forecasting epileptic seizures using EEG signals, wavelet transform and artificial neural networks

Electroencephalograms (EEG) are signal records of electrical activity of brain neurons. EEG, which is a compulsive tool, used for diagnosing neurological diseases such as epilepsy, besides of techniques such as magnetic resonance and brain tomography (BT) that are used for diagnosing structural brain disorders. This paper describes a novel approach for forecasting epileptic seizure activity, by classifying these EEG signals. The decision making consists of two stages; initially the signal features are extracted by applying wavelet transform (WT) and then an artificial neural network (ANN) model, which is a supervised learning-based algorithm classifier, used for signal classification. Wavelet transform is an effective tool for analysis of transient events in non-stationary signals, such as EEGs. The performance of the ANN classifier is evaluated in terms of sensitivity, specificity and classification accuracy. The obtained classification accuracy confirms that the proposed scheme has potential in classifying EEG signals.