Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach

Abstract Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness that leads to distortions in cognition, perception, emotions, speech, self-awareness, and actions. Affecting about 1% of people worldwide, schizophrenia usually emerges in late adolescence or early adulthood. It is characterized by sy...

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Main Authors: Utathya Aich, Arghyasree Saha, Marcin Woźniak, Muhammad Fazal Ijaz, Pawan Kumar Singh
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-07-01
Series:Scientific Reports
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06121-7
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author Utathya Aich
Arghyasree Saha
Marcin Woźniak
Muhammad Fazal Ijaz
Pawan Kumar Singh
author_facet Utathya Aich
Arghyasree Saha
Marcin Woźniak
Muhammad Fazal Ijaz
Pawan Kumar Singh
author_sort Utathya Aich
collection DOAJ
description Abstract Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness that leads to distortions in cognition, perception, emotions, speech, self-awareness, and actions. Affecting about 1% of people worldwide, schizophrenia usually emerges in late adolescence or early adulthood. It is characterized by symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and cognitive impairments. Despite significant research efforts, the exact cause of schizophrenia is still not fully understood, highlighting the need for continuous investigation into new diagnostic and treatment methods. The electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures brain electrical activity using scalp electrodes, is crucial in schizophrenia research due to its ability to detect subtle brain activity changes due to high temporal information and provide valuable insights into brain function. Many methods have been proposed to identify schizophrenia for diagnosis. Different machine learning and deep learning models have been used to improve the detection of schizophrenia. Through transfer learning using deep learning models, relevant features are selected automatically, outperforming traditional methods in accuracy and speed. Our paper introduces a three-stage framework for detection of schizophrenia from EEG signals. An image encoding method has been used to encode EEG signals to scalogram images to get both spatial and temporal information of the time series data. Using these images in the second step, two pre-trained deep learning models are implemented using transfer learning to extract features for the detection of schizophrenia. In the third step, a newly developed Average subtraction wrapper-based feature selection method has been proposed to lower the number of irrelevant features. The proposed framework has been tested on two datasets. The first (M.S.U) dataset is from M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University which contains EEG data of 84 individuals where 45 individuals are with schizophrenia symptoms and the rest are 39 individuals are healthy. The second RepOD dataset contains EEG data of 28 individuals where both schizophrenic and healthy individuals are equal in number. Our framework achieved 99.67% and 99.97% accuracy on the first and second dataset, respectively. On both the datasets, our proposed framework outperformed state of the art results.
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spelling doaj-art-9185e7adad4a4925bc2db8775809eb612025-08-20T03:37:29ZengNature PortfolioScientific Reports2045-23222025-07-0115112910.1038/s41598-025-06121-7Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approachUtathya Aich0Arghyasree Saha1Marcin Woźniak2Muhammad Fazal Ijaz3Pawan Kumar Singh4Machine Learning Engineer, CNH Industrial ITCDepartment of Information Technology, Jadavpur UniversityFaculty of Applied Mathematics, Silesian University of TechnologyTorrens University, 196 Flinders StDepartment of Information Technology, Jadavpur UniversityAbstract Schizophrenia is a persistent and serious mental illness that leads to distortions in cognition, perception, emotions, speech, self-awareness, and actions. Affecting about 1% of people worldwide, schizophrenia usually emerges in late adolescence or early adulthood. It is characterized by symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech, and cognitive impairments. Despite significant research efforts, the exact cause of schizophrenia is still not fully understood, highlighting the need for continuous investigation into new diagnostic and treatment methods. The electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures brain electrical activity using scalp electrodes, is crucial in schizophrenia research due to its ability to detect subtle brain activity changes due to high temporal information and provide valuable insights into brain function. Many methods have been proposed to identify schizophrenia for diagnosis. Different machine learning and deep learning models have been used to improve the detection of schizophrenia. Through transfer learning using deep learning models, relevant features are selected automatically, outperforming traditional methods in accuracy and speed. Our paper introduces a three-stage framework for detection of schizophrenia from EEG signals. An image encoding method has been used to encode EEG signals to scalogram images to get both spatial and temporal information of the time series data. Using these images in the second step, two pre-trained deep learning models are implemented using transfer learning to extract features for the detection of schizophrenia. In the third step, a newly developed Average subtraction wrapper-based feature selection method has been proposed to lower the number of irrelevant features. The proposed framework has been tested on two datasets. The first (M.S.U) dataset is from M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University which contains EEG data of 84 individuals where 45 individuals are with schizophrenia symptoms and the rest are 39 individuals are healthy. The second RepOD dataset contains EEG data of 28 individuals where both schizophrenic and healthy individuals are equal in number. Our framework achieved 99.67% and 99.97% accuracy on the first and second dataset, respectively. On both the datasets, our proposed framework outperformed state of the art results.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06121-7Schizophrenia detectionDeep learning modelElectroencephalogram signalsContinuous wavelet transformScalogramTransfer learning
spellingShingle Utathya Aich
Arghyasree Saha
Marcin Woźniak
Muhammad Fazal Ijaz
Pawan Kumar Singh
Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach
Scientific Reports
Schizophrenia detection
Deep learning model
Electroencephalogram signals
Continuous wavelet transform
Scalogram
Transfer learning
title Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach
title_full Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach
title_fullStr Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach
title_full_unstemmed Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach
title_short Schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper-based deep feature selection approach
title_sort schizophrenia detection from electroencephalogram signals using image encoding and wrapper based deep feature selection approach
topic Schizophrenia detection
Deep learning model
Electroencephalogram signals
Continuous wavelet transform
Scalogram
Transfer learning
url https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-06121-7
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AT marcinwozniak schizophreniadetectionfromelectroencephalogramsignalsusingimageencodingandwrapperbaseddeepfeatureselectionapproach
AT muhammadfazalijaz schizophreniadetectionfromelectroencephalogramsignalsusingimageencodingandwrapperbaseddeepfeatureselectionapproach
AT pawankumarsingh schizophreniadetectionfromelectroencephalogramsignalsusingimageencodingandwrapperbaseddeepfeatureselectionapproach