ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The issue of preserving interictal activityin long-term EEG studies of epilepsy
1 Engineering and Physical Institute of Biomedicine, National Research Nuclear University MEPhI, Moscow, Russia
2 La Salute Clinic, Moscow, Russia
Correspondence should be addressed: Sergey A. Gulyaev
Ramenki, 31, k. 136, Moscow, 119607; ur.xednay@ssurgres
Author contribution: Gulyaev SA— study concept, EEG analysis, manuscript writing; Klimanov SG, Germashev GA, Khanukhova LM — data analysis; Garmash AA — project management.
Compliance with ethical standards: the study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the La Salute Clinic (protocol No. 11-011/24 dated 11 January 2024); it was conducted in accordance with the contract between the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI and La Salute Clinic (No. 09-01/23 dated 09 January 2023) and the principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki (1964) and its subsequent updates.
Modern application of mathematical methods for analyzing EEG recordings is limited due to the phenomenon of information averaging. In these conditions, it is important to find the most likely method for improving the quality of diagnosis of paroxysmal pathological patterns that have a short “life”, such as outbreaks and subclinical paroxysms. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the possibility of excluding interictal activity from a long-term EEG study in order to achieve its information “enrichment” by forming conditional sequences of pathological changes representing its main clinical task. Forty people of different ages and both sexes were examined. The control group included 20 patients aged 12–67 years with direct detection of spike-wave activity on the EEG. The comparison group consisted of 20 patients aged 10–66 years with no spike-wave activity in the recording. It has been shown that interictal data obtained in patients with epileptiform phenomena are not of significant interest for the main group of clinical studies. The exclusion of these data leads to the “enrichment” of information due to the sequential placement of paroxysmal patterns and makes it possible to obtain not only more compact results of examinations of the pathological component, but also to form a basis for developments using technologies for their subsequent mathematical analysis.
Keywords: electroencephalography, continued EEG studies, analysis of results, workload on the doctor