Performance evaluation of metaheuristics-tuned recurrent neural networks for electroencephalography anomaly detection

Dejan Pilcevic; Milica Djuric Jovicic; Milos Antonijevic; Nebojsa Bacanin; Luka Jovanovic; Miodrag Zivkovic; Miroslav Dragovic; Petar Bisevac

doi:10.3389/fphys.2023.1267011

Performance evaluation of metaheuristics-tuned recurrent neural networks for electroencephalography anomaly detection

Front Physiol. 2023 Nov 14:14:1267011. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1267011. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Dejan Pilcevic¹, Milica Djuric Jovicic², Milos Antonijevic³, Nebojsa Bacanin³, Luka Jovanovic³, Miodrag Zivkovic³, Miroslav Dragovic⁴, Petar Bisevac³

Affiliations

¹ Clinic for Nephrology, Military Medical Academy, University of Defense, Belgrade, Serbia.
² Innovation Center of the School of Electrical Engineering, Belgrade, Serbia.
³ Department of Informatics and Computing, Singidunum University, Belgrade, Serbia.
⁴ School of Dental Medicine, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.

Abstract

Electroencephalography (EEG) serves as a diagnostic technique for measuring brain waves and brain activity. Despite its precision in capturing brain electrical activity, certain factors like environmental influences during the test can affect the objectivity and accuracy of EEG interpretations. Challenges associated with interpretation, even with advanced techniques to minimize artifact influences, can significantly impact the accurate interpretation of EEG findings. To address this issue, artificial intelligence (AI) has been utilized in this study to analyze anomalies in EEG signals for epilepsy detection. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are AI techniques specifically designed to handle sequential data, making them well-suited for precise time-series tasks. While AI methods, including RNNs and artificial neural networks (ANNs), hold great promise, their effectiveness heavily relies on the initial values assigned to hyperparameters, which are crucial for their performance for concrete assignment. To tune RNN performance, the selection of hyperparameters is approached as a typical optimization problem, and metaheuristic algorithms are employed to further enhance the process. The modified hybrid sine cosine algorithm has been developed and used to further improve hyperparameter optimization. To facilitate testing, publicly available real-world EEG data is utilized. A dataset is constructed using captured data from healthy and archived data from patients confirmed to be affected by epilepsy, as well as data captured during an active seizure. Two experiments have been conducted using generated dataset. In the first experiment, models were tasked with the detection of anomalous EEG activity. The second experiment required models to segment normal, anomalous activity as well as detect occurrences of seizures from EEG data. Considering the modest sample size (one second of data, 158 data points) used for classification models demonstrated decent outcomes. Obtained outcomes are compared with those generated by other cutting-edge metaheuristics and rigid statistical validation, as well as results' interpretation is performed.

Keywords: EEG anomaly detection; RNN; metaheuristics optimization; sine cosine algorithm; time series prediction.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was financially supported by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovations of the Republic of Serbia under contract number: 451-03-47/2023-01/200223.