Graph representations of iEEG data for seizure detection with graph neural networks

Abstract

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that affects over 50 million individuals worldwide. Today, the gold-standard treatment for those who are drug resistant, meaning that symptoms cannot be controlled with medication, is to surgically remove the seizure onset zone (SOZ), the area of the brain believed to cause seizures: the main symptom of epilepsy. Unfortunately, around 50% of drug resistant patients are not resective candidates, which can be attributed in part to poor SOZ localization. SOZ localization is a complex and lengthy procedure, requiring visual inspection and manual processing by human experts that first need to localize and isolate seizure events. The intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) is a tool that records electrophysiological activity of the inner brain at different regions and depths, and provides critical information on the SOZ. However, iEEG data processing methodologies are not standardized, and practice and resources vary across hospitals and clinics. To assist human experts with systematic processing of iEEG data, we propose a data processing pipeline that generates graph representations of iEEG data. We evaluate 9 different graph representations of publicly available iEEG data from 25 patients with epilepsy with a graph neural network model trained to detect seizures. Our results suggest that graph representations of iEEG data that leverage electrode and functional connectivity features are powerful data structures to analyze and interpret iEEG data in the context of epilepsy. We anticipate that our data pipeline that provides a systematic processing of neural data with graphs can integrate other data modalities like neuroimaging data. Moreover, methods used in the data pipeline have potentials to apply to other neurological disorders such as Parkinsons disease or major depression disorder.