Online epileptic seizure detection in a home environment.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects around 1% of the people worldwide. It is characterized by seizures, which are caused by temporary distortions of the electrical activity in the brain. Circa 30% of the patients have so-called refractory epilepsy and can not be cured with the use of anti-epileptic drugs. They continue to get seizures, which can lead to dangerous situations in a home environment.

Algorithms for automated seizure detection are challenging due to their large variability amongst patients and seizures and due to their low seizure frequency. Typically the electroencephalogram (EEG) is used for automated seizure detection, but obtaining it outside the hospital is very hard and impractical. Therefore, other biomedical signals such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) are used for home monitoring. Information will be extracted from the ECG in the PhD, which will be used in order to make an online epileptic seizure detection using only ECG.

Other biomedical signals that can be used for online seizure detection are the electromyogram (EMG) and accelerometers. These especially offer an added value for the detection of seizures including motoric activity. The information of the different modalities will be combined in order to detect different types of seizures faster and with increased accuracy.