Giving Compass' Take:

• Brandie Jefferson reports that an artificial intelligence-based model that researchers have developed accurately identifies and detects seizures.

• How might new seizure-detecting software offer protection for those struggling with epilepsy? How can we offer funding to ensure this sort of technology is available for those in marginalized communities?

• Learn more about how predicting and detecting seizures can improve the lives of people with epilepsy.

Researchers have combined artificial intelligence with systems theory to develop a more efficient way to detect and accurately identify an epileptic seizure in real time.

“Our technique allows us to get raw data, process it, and extract a feature that’s more informative for the machine learning model to use,” says Walter Bomela, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Jr-Shin Li, professor in the electrical and systems engineering department of the Washington University in St. Louis McKelvey School of Engineering.

In brain science, the current understanding of most seizures is that they occur when normal brain activity is interrupted by a strong, sudden hyper-synchronized firing of a cluster of neurons. During a seizure, if a person is hooked up to an electroencephalograph—a device known as an EEG that measures electrical output—the abnormal brain activity is presented as amplified spike-and-wave discharges.

“But the seizure detection accuracy is not that good when temporal EEG signals are used,” Bomela says. The team developed a network inference technique to facilitate detection of a seizure and pinpoint its location with

One day, a person with a seizure disorder can wear a device analogous to an insulin pump. As the neurons begin to synchronize, the device will deliver medication or electrical interference to stop the seizure in its tracks.

Before this can happen, researchers need a better understanding of the neural network.

“While the ultimate goal is to refine the technique for clinical use, right now we are focused on developing methods to identify seizures as drastic changes in brain activity,” Li says. “These changes are captured by treating the brain as a network in our current method.”

improved accuracy.

Read the full article about how researchers can detect seizures by Brandie Jefferson at Futurity.