Independent Component Analysis(ICA) of Sleep Waves

Lee, I K

Abstract

Independent Component Analysis (ICA) is a blind source separation method using unsupervised learning and mutual information theory created in the late eighties and developed in the nineties. It has already succeeded in separating eye movement artifacts from human scalp EEG recording. Several characteristic sleep waves such as sleep spindle, K-complex, and positive occipital sharp transient of sleep (POSTS) can be recorded during sleep EEG recording. They are used as stage determining factors of sleep staging and might be reflections of unknown neural sources during sleep. We applied the ICA method to sleep EEG for sleep waves separation. Eighteen channel scalp longitudinal bipolar montage was used for the EEG recording. With the sampling rate of 256Hz, digital EEG data were converted into 18 by n matrix which was used as a original data matrix X. Independent source matrix U (18 by n) was obtained by independent component analysis method (U=WxX, where W is an 18 by 18 matrix obtained by ICA procedures). ICA was applied to the original EEG containing sleep spindle, K-complex, and POSTS. Among the 18 independent components, those containing characteristic shape of sleep waves could be identified. Each independent component was reconstructed into original montage by the product of inverse matrix of W (inv(W)) and U. The reconstructed EEG might be a separation of sleep waves without other components of original EEG matrix X. This result (might) demonstrates that characteristic sleep waves may be separated from original EEG of unknown mixed neural origins by the independent Component Analysis (ICA) method.