Alzheimer's disease patients classification through EEG signals processing

Abstract

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and its preliminary stage - Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) - are the most widespread neurodegenerative disorders, and their investigation remains an open challenge. ElectroEncephalography (EEG) appears as a non-invasive and repeatable technique to diagnose brain abnormalities. Despite technical advances, the analysis of EEG spectra is usually carried out by experts that must manually perform laborious interpretations. Computational methods may lead to a quantitative analysis of these signals and hence to characterize EEG time series. The aim of this work is to achieve an automatic patients classification from the EEG biomedical signals involved in AD and MCI in order to support medical doctors in the right diagnosis formulation. The analysis of the biological EEG signals requires effective and efficient computer science methods to extract relevant information. Data mining, which guides the automated knowledge discovery process, is a natural way to approach EEG data analysis. Specifically, in our work we apply the following analysis steps: (i) pre-processing of EEG data; (ii) processing of the EEG-signals by the application of time-frequency transforms; and (iii) classification by means of machine learning methods. We obtain promising results from the classification of AD, MCI, and control samples that can assist the medical doctors in identifying the pathology.