An Active Dry-Contact Continuous EEG Monitoring System for Seizure Detection Applications in Clinical Neurophysiology

Abstract

Objective: Young children and infants, especially newborns, are highly susceptible to seizures, which, if undetected and untreated, can lead to severe long-term neurological consequences. Early detection typically requires continuous electroencephalography (cEEG) monitoring in hospital settings, involving costly equipment and highly trained specialists. This study presents a low-cost, active dry-contact electrode-based, adjustable electroencephalography (EEG) headset, combined with an explainable deep learning model for seizure detection from reduced-montage EEG, and a multimodal artifact removal algorithm to enhance signal quality. Methods: EEG signals were acquired via active electrodes and processed through a custom-designed analog front end for filtering and digitization. The adjustable headset was fabricated using three-dimensional printing and laser cutting to accommodate varying head sizes. The deep learning model was trained to detect neonatal seizures in real time, and a dedicated multimodal algorithm was implemented for artifact removal while preserving seizure-relevant information. System performance was evaluated in a representative clinical setting on a pediatric patient with absence seizures, with simultaneous recordings obtained from the proposed device and a commercial wet-electrode cEEG system for comparison. Results: Signals from the proposed system exhibited a correlation coefficient exceeding 0.8 with those from the commercial device. Signal-to-noise ratio analysis indicated noise mitigation performance comparable to the commercial system. The deep learning model achieved accuracy and recall improvements of 2.76% and 16.33%, respectively, over state-of-the-art approaches. The artifact removal algorithm effectively identified and eliminated noise while preserving seizure-related EEG features.