Multichannel sleep spindle detection using sparse low-rank optimization

Background We propose a multichannel spindle detection method that detects global and local spindle activity across all channels of scalp EEG in a single run New Method Using a non-linear signal model, which assumes the multichannel EEG to be a sum of a transient component and an oscillatory component, we propose a multichannel transient separation algorithm. Consecutive overlapping blocks of the multichannel oscillatory component are assumed to be low-rank whereas the transient component is assumed to be piecewise constant with a zero baseline. The estimated multichannel oscillatory component is used in conjunction with a bandpass filter and the Teager operator for detecting sleep spindles Results and comparison with other methods Several examples are shown to illustrate the utility of the proposed method in detecting global and local spindle activity. The proposed method is applied to two publicly available databases and compared with 7 existing single-channel automated detectors. F1 scores for the proposed spindle detection method averaged 0.66 (0.02) and 0.62 (0.06) for the two databases, respectively. For an overnight 6 channel EEG signal, the proposed algorithm takes about 4 minutes to detect sleep spindles simultaneously across all channels with a single setting of corresponding algorithmic parameters Conclusions The proposed method aims to mimic and utilize, for better spindle detection, a particular human expert behavior where the decision to mark a spindle event may be subconsciously influenced by the presence of a spindle in EEG channels other than the central channel visible on a digital screen