Assessment and post-treatment evaluation of absence epilepsy seizures
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Low-density electroencephalography for the assessment and post-treatment evaluation of absence epilepsy seizures
IRAS ID
219085
Contact name
David Elliott
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 3 months, 1 days
Research summary
Absence epilepsy is a neurodevelopmental disorder that can develop during childhood or early adolescence and constitutes around 10% of paediatric epilepsy patients (Hughes, 2009). Absence, or petit mal, seizures are characterised by brief, bilateral 3Hz generalised spike-and-slow wave discharges of electrical activity generated from firing neurons, lasting around 9 to 12 seconds (Hughes, 2009). The current main diagnostic method uses Electroencephalography (EEG) in conjunction with video monitoring (Sakkalis, et al., 2013). EEG measures the mean electrical activity measured from electrodes at different sites of the head. Typically, diagnosis will rely on years of training to visually inspect the EEG records. A portable EEG system, comprised of a wearable head band and android app, has been developed to aid the assessment and post-treatment evaluation of absence epilepsy seizures.
The project primarily aims to investigate the utility and data quality of low-density portable EEG, with 'dry' electrodes, and current medical EEG, with 'wet'electrodes, for absence epilepsy seizure detection in the clinic. Secondary aims are to investigate the ability of automatically detecting seizures in both medical and portable EEG, using modern detection algorithms, both on data collected in the clinic and at the patients home (ambulatory EEG). Other secondary objectives include investigating patient acceptability and patient adherence of active (recording a seizure diary) and passive (wearing portable EEG) seizure tracking methods, and comparing the cognitive abilities of absence epilepsy patients to controls and pre- and post-medication administration.
REC name
North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NW/0070
Date of REC Opinion
6 Mar 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion