EEG Signal Classification using Variational Mode Decomposition

Abstract: Epilepsy affects about 1% of the population every year, and is characterized by abnormal and sudden hyper-synchronous excitation of the neurons in the brain. The electroencephalogram(EEG) is the most widely used method to record brain signals and diagnose epilepsy and seizure cases. In this paper we use the method of Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) in our analysis to classify seizure/seizure free signals. This technique uses variational non recursive mode decomposition, in comparison to other methods like Empirical Mode (EMD) and Hilbert-Huang transform which recursively decompose the signals, making them more susceptible to noise and sampling rate. VMD decomposes a signal into its components which are called principal modes. In our analysis, 4 features of the decomposed signals namely Renyi Entropy, second order difference plot (SODP), fourth order difference plot(FODP) and average amplitude are investigated, both individually and using a ranking methodology considering all 4 features at the same time. The SODP of decomposed signal modes is an elliptical structure. The 95% confidence ellipse area measured from the SODP of the decomposed signal modes has been used as a feature in order to discriminate seizure-free EEG signals from the epileptic seizure EEG signal. For the classification, a Multilayer Perceptron(MLP) with back propagation algorithm as the training method was used. A high percentage of accuracy was obtained when the features were used individually for classification and an even higher degree of accuracy was obtained when the ranking methodology was used.