title: A new EEG artifact specific to digital acquisition.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To increase awareness in electroencephalographers of a new digital-specific artifact that could be falsely interpreted as epileptiform.
  
  
  METHODS
  Several examples of this artifact were discovered in clinical EEG recording. Examples of the clinical recording are presented using custom software to highlight the artifact. The underlying digital data were examined with standard hexadecimal editing software to verify the exact binary duplication error.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The artifact appears as repetitions of very brief intervals (50 milliseconds). In channels in which the signal has a large excursion (sharp slope) over this time frame, the repetition of a 50-millisecond interval could appear similar to polyspikes. In one instance, such a misinterpretation led to a technologist instructing a patient to remain in the clinic because of an "abnormality."
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Artifacts that mislead the electroencephalographer are serious problems that can lead to erroneous affirmative diagnoses. The transition to digital acquisition brings the potential for new digital-specific errors. This report describes one such new digital artifact, discusses a conjecture for the stage of hardware where the artifact arises, suggests strategies for electroencephalographers to identify this artifact, and provides recommendations to clinical hardware vendors to avoid this error.
authors: Department of Neurology, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, USA. douglas.maus@gmail.com
authors: Douglas
authors: D
authors: Maus
mesh_terms: D016477:Artifacts; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D006801:Humans; D012984:Software