基于改进的符号转移熵的心脑电信号耦合研究

试图探究动力系统中的耦合关系一直以来都是国内外众多学者关注的热点,传统的时间序列符号化分析方法会使研究结果受序列非平稳性的严重影响,本文在原有转移熵的研究基础上,应用粗粒化提取,经过理论与实验的分析,发现心脑电信号耦合研究中的转移熵值在不同提取情况下对应不同的分布趋势,并选择效果最好的信号数据提取方法用在其后的应用分析中. 此外,对时间序列符号化方法提出改进,采用动态的自适应分割方法. 实验结果表明,无论清醒期还是睡眠期,改进的符号转移熵算法观测分析到的心脑电信号耦合作用更显著,能更好的捕捉到信号中的动态信息、系统动力学复杂性的改变,更利于医学临床实践应用中的检测,在分析非平稳的时间序列上具有更好的效果. 关键词： 心脑电信号 粗粒化 符号转移熵 基本尺度     

基于改进功率谱熵的抑郁症脑电信号活跃性研究

采用非线性动力学方法研究脑精神疾病是近年来国内外学者研究的热点和趋势.针对脑精神疾病的研究和诊断中缺少客观有效的量化参数和量化指标的状况,提出了一种根据对时间序列功率谱划分而定义的谱熵,然后用其计算和分析脑电信号谱熵的方法.通过数据仿真试验证明该谱熵和信号活跃性之间存在正相关关系.基于这种相关性,应用该方法对抑郁症患者和正常对照组的脑电信号功率谱熵进行了数值计算,然后进行了分析对比和统计检验.实验结果表明:抑郁症患者脑电信号的功率谱熵在部分脑区显著弱于正常健康人.证明该谱熵能够表征大脑电生理活动状况,提供反映其活动性强弱的信息,可以作为度量大脑电生理活动性的一个参数.这对于能否将该功率谱熵作为诊断脑精神疾病的物理参数具有积极意义.     

基于自适应模板法的脑电信号转移熵分析

脑电信号是一种产生机理相当复杂且非常微弱的随机信号, 综合反映了大脑组织的脑电活动及大脑的功能状态. 由于脑电信号的微弱性, 传统的基本模板方法在脑电信号分析上得到了良好的应用. 为进一步提升分析脑电信号的性能, 提出了一种新的基于自适应模板的转移熵方法并分析了青少年脑电与成年人脑电信号. 结果表明: 对于青少年脑电还是成年人脑电, 与基本模板法相比, 基于自适应模板法的转移熵可以更显著地表示脑电信号的耦合作用, 并且具有更好的区分度, 这将能更好地捕捉到信号中的动态信息、系统动力学复杂性的改变. 同时, 该方法将更有利于医学临床诊断的辅助检测, 对脑电信号是否处于病理状态的诊断提供了新的更好的判断依据.     

改进的相对转移熵的癫痫脑电分析

脑电信号是由脑神经活动产生并且始终存在于中枢神经系统的自发性电位活动,是一种重要的生物电信号. 脑电信号是非常微弱的且是非线性的,脑电信号也具有时间不可逆性. 本文提出了一种新的基于正向序列转移概率与逆向序列转移概率的相对熵方法即相对转移熵方法,并应用此方法研究了正常脑电与癫痫脑电的不可逆性,实验结果显示癫痫患者的脑电信号的不可逆性明显小于正常人的脑电信号的不可逆性. 这说明改进的相对转移熵可以作为一个物理过程不可逆程度的度量参数,这使得应用脑电信号区分病人是否患有癫痫疾病具有积极指导意义. 关键词： 相对转移熵 脑电信号 符号化 时间不可逆性     

基于非线性预测效果的癫痫脑电信号的特征提取方法

在非线性时间序列预测研究的基础上,提出了基于非线性预测效果的癫痫脑电信号特征提取方法,从脑电信号中自动检测出癫痫脑电信号.采用基于可预测性的选取嵌入维数的方法确定脑电信号序列的嵌入维数,进行相空间重构.实验结果表明:基于非线性预测效果的特征提取方法提取的特征能明显地区分癫痫脑电信号与正常脑电信号,该非线性特征提取方法适合小数据量的情况且对噪声的稳定性好.     

基于改进的符号相对熵的脑电信号时间不可逆性研究

提出了一种新的使用过程的前向概率和后向概率计算符号相对熵, 并利用符号相对熵来估计熵产的方法. 该方法是基于熵增和过程不可逆特性关系的, 同时证明脑电信号具有时间不可逆特性, 而且该不可逆特性可以提供脑电信号的熵增信息. 最后应用该方法对青老年脑电信号进行数值计算及对比, 结果是老年人的平均能量损耗显著高于年轻人, 证明符号相对熵可以作为一个物理过程不可逆程度的度量参数, 这对脑电信号是否处于积极或平衡状态的诊断治疗具有积极的作用.     

一种基于非完整二维相空间分量置换的混沌检测方法

由于混沌时间序列和随机过程具有很多类似的性质, 因而在实际中很难将两者区分开来. 混沌信号检测与识别是混沌时间序列分析中一个重要的课题. 混沌信号是由确定性的混沌映射或混沌系统产生的, 相比于高斯白噪声序列, 其在非完整的二维相空间中表现出更加丰富的结构特性. 本文通过研究混沌时间序列和高斯白噪声序列在非完整二维相空间中的分布特性, 利用混沌信号的非线性动力学特性, 提出了一种基于非完整二维相空间分量置换的混沌信号检测方法. 该方法首先由接收序列得到非完整的二维相空间, 基于第一维分量大小关系实现对第二维分量的置换与分组, 进一步求得F检验统计量. 然后利用混沌系统的局部特性, 获取非完整二维相空间的动力学结构信息, 实现对混沌序列的有效检测. 在高斯白噪声条件下对多种混沌信号进行了信号检测的数值仿真. 仿真结果表明: 相比置换熵检测, 本文所提算法所需数据量小、计算简单以及具有更低的时间复杂度, 同时对噪声具有更好的鲁棒性.     

脑电信号的多尺度排列熵分析

本文利用多尺度排列熵对正常脑电信号和癫痫脑电信号进行了详细的分析和比较,研究了脑电图信号多尺度排列熵值和年龄的关系以及尺度因子对多尺度排列熵值的影响.通过对处于各个年龄段的22组正常人和22组患有癫痫人群的脑电图进行多尺度排列熵分析,发现在相同年龄段的人群中,正常脑电信号的多尺度排列熵值要高于癫痫脑电信号,熵值平均高出约0.19,约7.9%.另外,在尺度因子小于15的情况下,对于在30到35的年龄段正常人群,其多尺度排列熵值最大,随着年龄段的增大或降低熵值都一定程度的降低.结果证明,多尺度排列熵可以成功区分正常脑电信号和癫痫脑电信号,并且熵值可以正确地反映人体大脑发育的一般过程.     

脑电信号的样本熵分析

运用非线性动力学方法对癫痫患者与正常人的脑电数据进行分析。研究结果表明,癫痫患者发作期的样本熵值总体上低于正常人,并且癫痫患者在发作时的脑电样本熵值较发作前有明显降低,发作后又回到发前水平。这预示着样本熵可能为癫痫病的临床诊断提供一定的参考。同时通过实验验证,样本熵具有较好的一致性,且只需要较短的数据就能达到分析目的,是分析脑电信号的有利手段。     

基于近似熵的突变检测新方法

近似熵是一个有效的非线性动力学指数,能够用于表征时间序列的复杂性,通过滑动窗口技术,近似熵对于一维时间序列的动力学结构突变具有一定的识别能力,但其突变检测结果依赖于子序列长度的选择,且不能准确定位突变点.鉴于此,本文提出了一种新的突变检测方法——滑动移除近似熵.测试结果表明,滑动移除近似熵具有检测结果稳定性好、准确性高等特点,明显优于滑动近似熵和Mann-Kendall方法,其在实际观测资料中的应用进一步证实了新方法的可靠性. 关键词： 近似熵 滑动移除近似熵 突变检测     

The Tsallis entropy of natural information

Estimating the information contained in natural data, such as electroencephalography data, is unusually difficult because the relationship between the physical data and the information that it encodes is unknown. This unknown relationship is often called the encoding problem. The present work provides a solution to this problem by deriving a method to estimate the Tsallis entropy in natural data. The method is based on two findings. The first finding is that the physical instantiation of any information event, that is, the physical occurrence of a symbol of information, must begin and end at a discontinuity or critical point (maximum, minimum, or saddle point) in the data. The second finding is that, in certain data types such as the encephalogram (EEG), the variance within of an EEG waveform event is directly proportional to its probability of occurrence.These two outcomes yield two results. The first is the easy binning of data into separate information events. The second is the ability to estimate probabilities in two ways: frequency counting and computing the variance within of an EEG waveform. These results are used to derive a linear estimator of the Tsallis entropy functional, allowing it to be estimated without deducing the encoding.This method for estimating the Tsallis entropy is first used to estimate the information in simple signals. The amount of information estimated is highly accurate. The method is then applied to two problems in electroencephalography. The first is distinguishing normal aging from very early Alzheimer's disease (mild cognitive impairment), and the second is medication monitoring of Alzheimer's disease treatment. The former is done with an accuracy of 92% and the latter with an accuracy of 91%. This detection accuracy is the highest published accuracy in the literature, which suggests that this method for Tsallis entropy estimation is both accurate and useful.     

Time-series analysis of sleep-wake stage of rat EEG using time-dependent pattern entropy

We performed electroencephalography (EEG) for six male Wistar rats to clarify temporal behaviors at different levels of consciousness. Levels were identified both by conventional sleep analysis methods and by our novel entropy method. In our method, time-dependent pattern entropy is introduced, by which EEG is reduced to binary symbolic dynamics and the pattern of symbols in a sliding temporal window is considered. A high correlation was obtained between level of consciousness as measured by the conventional method and mean entropy in our entropy method. Mean entropy was maximal while awake (stage W) and decreased as sleep deepened. These results suggest that time-dependent pattern entropy may offer a promising method for future sleep research.     

List of contributors

This study aimed to examine the background electroencephalography (EEG) in children with childhood absence epilepsy, a condition whose presentation has strong developmental links. EEG hallmarks of absence seizure activity are widely accepted and there is recognition that the bulk of inter-ictal EEG in this group is normal to the naked eye. This multidisciplinary study aimed to use the normalized total wavelet entropy (NTWS) (Signal Processing 83 (2003) 1275) to examine the background EEG of those patients demonstrating absence seizure activity, and compare it with children without absence epilepsy. This calculation can be used to define the degree of order in a system, with higher levels of entropy indicating a more disordered (chaotic) system. Results were subjected to further statistical analyses of significance. Entropy values were calculated for patients versus controls. For all channels combined, patients with absence epilepsy showed (statistically significant) lower entropy values than controls. The size of the difference in entropy values was not uniform, with certain EEG electrodes consistently showing greater differences than others.     

Information Geometric Theory in the Prediction of Abrupt Changes in System Dynamics

Detection and measurement of abrupt changes in a process can provide us with important tools for decision making in systems management. In particular, it can be utilised to predict the onset of a sudden event such as a rare, extreme event which causes the abrupt dynamical change in the system. Here, we investigate the prediction capability of information theory by focusing on how sensitive information-geometric theory (information length diagnostics) and entropy-based information theoretical method (information flow) are to abrupt changes. To this end, we utilise a non-autonomous Kramer equation by including a sudden perturbation to the system to mimic the onset of a sudden event and calculate time-dependent probability density functions (PDFs) and various statistical quantities with the help of numerical simulations. We show that information length diagnostics predict the onset of a sudden event better than the information flow. Furthermore, it is explicitly shown that the information flow like any other entropy-based measures has limitations in measuring perturbations which do not affect entropy.     

Incident case histories on mobile containers

While handling liquids in rigid intermediate bulk containers (RIBC), the assessment of ignition sources due to electrostatic discharges is of especial interest since it is often difficult to rule out all possible conditions which can lead to the generation of an effective discharge. Far from suggesting new criteria for the selection or construction of RIBC or standards for its design, this paper has the aim of describing three incidents where an electrostatic discharge caused a flammable mixture of vapours with air to ignite. Situations presented could usually be rated as highly remote on its probability of occurrence by operators since they are common and never caused an incident, but on the other hand it is rather easy, from a theoretical point of view, to explain the phenomena observed by applying the basic assessment rules for the generation of electrostatic ignition sources.If existing guidelines were to have been followed (mainly CENELEC 50404 and BGR132), those incidents would have not occurred.     

Tunnelling effect of the non-stationary Kerr black hole

Extending Parikh and Wilczek＇s work to the non-stationary black hole, we study the Hawking radiation of the non-stationary Kerr black hole by the Hamilto-Jacobi method. The result shows that the radiation spectrum is not purely thermal and the tunnelling probability is related to the change of Bekenstein Hawking entropy, which gives a correction to the Hawking thermal radiation of the black hole.     

A Comparative Study of Functional Connectivity Measures for Brain Network Analysis in the Context of AD Detection with EEG

This work addresses brain network analysis considering different clinical severity stages of cognitive dysfunction, based on resting-state electroencephalography (EEG). We use a cohort acquired in real-life clinical conditions, which contains EEG data of subjective cognitive impairment (SCI) patients, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. We propose to exploit an epoch-based entropy measure to quantify the connectivity links in the networks. This entropy measure relies on a refined statistical modeling of EEG signals with Hidden Markov Models, which allow a better estimation of the spatiotemporal characteristics of EEG signals. We also propose to conduct a comparative study by considering three other measures largely used in the literature: phase lag index, coherence, and mutual information. We calculated such measures at different frequency bands and computed different local graph parameters considering different proportional threshold values for a binary network analysis. After applying a feature selection procedure to determine the most relevant features for classification performance with a linear Support Vector Machine algorithm, our study demonstrates the effectiveness of the statistical entropy measure for analyzing the brain network in patients with different stages of cognitive dysfunction.