Advanced Trans-EEGNet Deep Learning Model for Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy Severity Grading

Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is a brain injury condition that poses a significant risk to newborns, potentially causing varying degrees of damage to the central nervous system. Its clinical manifestations include respiratory distress, cardiac dysfunction, hypotension, muscle weakness, seizures, and coma. As HIE represents a progressive brain injury, early identification of the extent of the damage and the implementation of appropriate treatment are crucial for reducing mortality and improving outcomes. HIE patients may face long-term complications such as cerebral palsy, epilepsy, vision loss, and developmental delays. Therefore, prompt identification and treatment of hypoxic-ischemic symptoms can help reduce the risk of severe sequelae in patients. Currently, hypothermia therapy is one of the most effective treatments for HIE patients. However, not all newborns with HIE are suitable for this therapy, making rapid and accurate assessment of the extent of brain injury critical for treatment. Among HIE patients, hypothermia therapy has shown better efficacy in those diagnosed with moderate to severe HIE within 6 h of birth, establishing this time frame as the golden period for treatment. During this golden period, an accurate assessment of HIE severity is essential for formulating appropriate treatment strategies and predicting long-term outcomes for the affected infants. This study proposes a method for addressing data imbalance and noise interference through data preprocessing techniques, including filtering and SMOTE. It then employs EEGNet, a deep learning model specifically designed for EEG classification, combined with a Transformer model featuring an attention mechanism that excels at capturing long-term sequential features to construct the Trans-EEGNet model. This model outperforms previous methods in computation time and feature extraction, enabling rapid classification and assessment of HIE severity in newborns.