Effective epileptic seizure detection with hybrid feature selection and SMOTE-based data balancing using SVM classifier

Epileptic seizures, a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality, pose significant challenges in timely diagnosis and management. Epilepsy, a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent and unpredictable seizures, affects over 70 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite significant advances in medical science, accurate and timely diagnosis of epileptic seizures remains a challenge, with misdiagnosis rates reported to be as high as 30%. The consequences of misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis can be severe, leading to increased morbidity, mortality, and reduced quality of life for patients. Therefore, this paper presents a novel approach to enhancing epileptic seizure detection through the integration of Synthetic Minority Over-Sampling Technique (SMOTE) for data balancing and a Hybrid Feature Selection Technique—Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). The proposed model aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of seizure detection systems by addressing data imbalance and extracting discriminative features from electroencephalograms (EEG) signals. Experimental results demonstrate substantial performance gains, with the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier achieving 97.30% accuracy, 99.62% Area Under the Curve (AUC), and 93.08% F1 score, which outperform the results of the existing studies from the literature. The results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed model in advancing seizure detection systems, highlighting the potential to improve diagnostic capabilities and patient outcomes.