Detection of epileptic seizures from single lead ECG by means of phase rectified signal averaging

Epileptic seizures have a clear effect on the regulatory mechanisms of the autonomic nervous system, especially on the cardiac and respiratory controls. Changes in heart rate and respiration are well known to occur around the onset of the seizure. This paper studies the ECG signals recorded from patients suffering from epilepsy, whose ages ranged from 3 to 48 years. Both focal and generalized seizures are considered. Changes in cardiorespiratory control and coupling, are assessed using phase rectified signal averaging (PRSA), wich is a technique that finds quasi-periodicities in noisy and non-stationary signals. A positive predictive value (PPV) of 86.21% with sensitivity of 100% was obtained for focal seizures, and a PPV of 84.3% with 93.1% sensitivity for generalized seizures.