Computer-aided spatial classification of epileptic spikes.

The authors present a method that can be used to identify exemplar spikes from prolonged EEG recordings. To achieve this they have calculated single dipole source models for each automatically detected spike-like waveform. They used a dipole source algorithm that is computationally light and can be run on-line during EEG acquisition. Although a single dipole source model may not provide anatomically accurate information about the location of generators of all epileptiform abnormalities, it does provide a novel spatial parameter that may be useful in its own right. The authors use this spatial parameter and present the relative spatial density of the dipole locations in the form of three planar projections of the spherical model (a view from above, a view from the right, and a view from behind) and allow users to define the x-, y-, and z-coordinates of points of interest within the spherical model. They then present 10 example waveforms of events that have dipole source model locations that occur close to that seed coordinate. Overall, they found that this method performs very well for frequent events, but does not perform well for rare events or for diffuse EEG abnormalities.