Abstracts

Rationale: A lack of access to high-quality long-term recordings have often hampered standardized and reproducible evaluations in the field of EEG analyses. We here present the European EPILEPSIAE database which has become available for research groups in 2012 and provides long-term EEG recordings of 275 patients with focal epilepsy Methods: The European EEG database was designed as a relational database including raw EEG (and ECG, EMG) data from patients undergoing long-term video-EEG recordings using scalp or intracranial EEG data, standardized annotations, MR datasets, and extensive clinical metadata regarding course of the disease, histopathology, seizure semiology and imaging data. The database was complemented by software allowing for a web-based data selection and computational processing. Results: 275 patients from the epilepsy centers of Coimbra, Paris and Freiburg with a minimum of 3 seizures were included in the database (total number of seizures: 2662), 50 of which had intracranial recordings. EEG sampling rate was 250-2500 Hz, Areas of seizure origin, early and late propagation were annotated in a standardized manner. The inclusion of data on daily AED dosages allows to correlate the occurrence of seizures and drug exposure. In addition, derived EEG features were calculated and integrated which have been used in the context of seizure prediction. Conclusions: The European EEG database exceeds the size of EEG databases available so far by two orders of magnitude. It can serve as a new standard for the application of algorithms to be used for spike and seizure detection as well as seizure prediction.