Clustering of Entropy Topography in Epileptic Electroencephalography

Epileptic seizures seem to result from an abnormal synchronization of different areas of the brain, as if a kind of recruitment occurred from a critical area towards other areas of the brain, until the brain itself can no longer bear the extent of this recruitment and triggers the seizure in order to reset this abnormal condition. In order to catch these recruitment phenomena, a technique based on entropy is introduced to study the synchronization of the electric activity of neuronal sources in the brain and tested over three EEG dataset from patients affected by partial epilepsy. Entropy showed a very steady spatial distribution and appeared linked to the region of seizure onset. Entropy mapping was compared with the standard power mapping that was much less stable and selective. A SOM based spatial clustering of entropy topography showed that the critical electrodes were coupled together long time before the seizure onset. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.