Recognition of Transient Phenomena in a Biosignal

Abstract

Electrical Activity of a human brain measured on the skull (electroencephalogram, EEG) contains in the sleep period many transients (sleep spindles, spike-like structures or vertex waves), i. e. bursts of EEG activity of limited duration, having random occurrence and may be coupled with specific sleep stages. A computer-based detector was designed that detects a transient called K-complex. The detector is based on linear matched filtering and its nonlinear modifications. The linear and nonlinear approaches are compared and evaluated with respect to the detection efficiency.