Graph-Based Electroencephalography Analysis in Tinnitus Therapy

Abstract

Tinnitus is the perception of sounds like ringing or buzzing in the ears without any external source, varying in intensity and potentially becoming chronic. This study aims to enhance the understanding and treatment of tinnitus by analyzing a dataset related to tinnitus therapy, focusing on electroencephalography (EEG) signals from patients undergoing treatment. The objectives of the study include applying various preprocessing techniques to ensure data quality, such as noise elimination and standardization of sampling rates, and extracting essential features from EEG signals, including power spectral density and statistical measures. The novelty of this research lies in its innovative approach to representing different channels of EEG signals as new graph network representations without losing any information. This transformation allows for the use of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), specifically Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) combined with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks, to model intricate relationships and temporal dependencies within the EEG data. This method enables a comprehensive analysis of the complex interactions between EEG channels. The study reports an impressive accuracy rate of 99.41%, demonstrating the potential of this novel approach. By integrating graph representation and deep learning, this research introduces a new methodology for analyzing tinnitus therapy data, aiming to contribute to more effective treatment strategies for tinnitus sufferers.