title: Early prediction of medication refractoriness in children with idiopathic epilepsy based on scalp EEG analysis.
abstract: Refractory epilepsy often has deleterious effects on an individual's health and quality of life. Early identification of patients whose seizures are refractory to antiepileptic drugs is important in considering the use of alternative treatments. Although idiopathic epilepsy is regarded as having a significantly lower risk factor of developing refractory epilepsy, still a subset of patients with idiopathic epilepsy might be refractory to medical treatment. In this study, we developed an effective method to predict the refractoriness of idiopathic epilepsy. Sixteen EEG segments from 12 well-controlled patients and 14 EEG segments from 11 refractory patients were analyzed at the time of first EEG recordings before antiepileptic drug treatment. Ten crucial EEG feature descriptors were selected for classification. Three of 10 were related to decorrelation time, and four of 10 were related to relative power of delta/gamma. There were significantly higher values in these seven feature descriptors in the well-controlled group as compared to the refractory group. On the contrary, the remaining three feature descriptors related to spectral edge frequency, kurtosis, and energy of wavelet coefficients demonstrated significantly lower values in the well-controlled group as compared to the refractory group. The analyses yielded a weighted precision rate of 94.2%, and a 93.3% recall rate. Therefore, the developed method is a useful tool in identifying the possibility of developing refractory epilepsy in patients with idiopathic epilepsy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, Departments of Pediatrics, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung Medical University, No. 100, Shih-Chuan 1st Rd., Kaohsiung City 80708, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Lung-Chang
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Chen-Sen
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Ouyang
authors.forename: Ching-Tai
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Chiang
authors.forename: Rei-Cheng
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Rong-Ching
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Hui-Chuan
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000927:Anticonvulsants / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003700:Delta Rhythm / Q000502:physiology; D004351:Drug Resistance / Q000502:physiology*; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000379:methods*; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D065818:Gamma Rhythm / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012535:Scalp; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D060388:Support Vector Machine
chemical_list: D000927:Anticonvulsants
keywords: EEG; Early prediction; feature descriptor; idiopathic epilepsy; refractory seizure; support vector machine