An EEG-Based Edge-AI Framework for Alzheimer’s and Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease Classification
Electroencephalography (EEG) has emerged as a promising non-invasive tool for the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders, and artificial intelligence (AI) has shown significant potential in this domain, as demonstrated by recent studies. However, strong inter-subject variability remains a major challenge, limiting the ability of AI-based models to learn disease-specific features that generalize across individuals, thereby hindering the development of clinically deployable subject-independent systems. In this work, we propose a cross-subject, AI-based EEG classification framework to distinguish between Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), and healthy control subjects using clinical EEG data collected from a local hospital. A lightweight hybrid deep learning model is developed, combining a two-layer one-dimensional convolutional neural network with a two-layer Transformer encoder to capture both local temporal patterns and long-range dependencies in EEG signals. The proposed model achieves an average classification accuracy of 97%, representing a 3% improvement over a baseline model evaluated on a cohort of 36 subjects. To assess deployment feasibility in real-time clinical settings, the trained model is implemented and evaluated on an edge-AI platform (NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin), demonstrating energy efficiency for the inference with a compact model footprint. These results indicate that the proposed approach provides an accurate, efficient, and practically deployable solution for subject-independent EEG-based classification of neurological disorders.
Authors
- Angelo Pascarella (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0085-9494)
- Muhammad Suffian
- Cosimo Ieracitano (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7890-2897)
- Nadia Mammone (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4962-3500)
- Francesco Carlo Morabito (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0734-9136)
- Edoardo Ferlazzo
Institutions
- Magna Graecia University (IT)
- Azienda ospedaliera "Bianchi-Melacrino-Morelli" (IT)
- Federico II University Hospital (IT)
- Metropolitan Hospital (GR)
- University of Reggio Calabria (IT)
- University of Naples Federico II (IT)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Sensors
- Published
- 2026-05-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3390/s26103274
- Primary Topic
- EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00