Multi-feature classifiers for burst detection in single EEG channels from preterm infants

The study of electroencephalographic (EEG) bursts in preterm infants provides valuable information about maturation or prognostication after perinatal asphyxia. Over the last two decades, a number of works proposed algorithms to automatically detect EEG bursts in preterm infants, but they were designed for populations under 35 weeks of post menstrual age (PMA). However, as the brain activity evolves rapidly during postnatal life, these solutions might be under-performing with increasing PMA. In this work we focused on preterm infants reaching term ages (PMA $geq$ 36 weeks) using multi-feature classification on a single EEG channel. Five EEG burst detectors relying on different machine learning approaches were compared: Logistic regression (LR), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), k-nearest neighbors (kNN), support vector machines (SVM) and thresholding (Th). Classifiers were trained by visually labeled EEG recordings from 14 very preterm infants (born after 28 weeks of gestation) with 36 - 41 weeks PMA. The most performing classifiers reached about 95% accuracy (kNN, SVM and LR) whereas Th obtained 84%. Compared to human-automatic agreements, LR provided the highest scores (Cohens kappa = 0.71) and the best computational efficiency using only three EEG features. Applying this classifier in a test database of 21 infants $geq$ 36 weeks PMA, we show that long EEG bursts and short inter-bust periods are characteristic of infants with the highest PMA and weights. In view of these results, LR-based burst detection could be a suitable tool to study maturation in monitoring or portable devices using a single EEG channel.