Deep Convolutional Neural Network Model for the Differential Diagnosis of Schizophrenia Using EEG Signals

Objective: One of the serious mental disorders in which people interpret reality in an abnormal situation is schizophrenia. A combination of extremely disordered thoughts, delusions, and hallucinations occurs due to schizophrenia, and the person's daily functions are seriously impaired due to this disease. For general cognitive activity analysis, electroencephalography signals are widely used as a low-resolution diagnostic tool. This study aimed to diagnose schizophrenia using the transfer learning method by including the EEGs of 73 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, and 67 patients from the healthy group. Material and Method: In the first step of the study, digital electroencephalography signal data was converted into spectrograms to make them usable. In the classification phase, ResNet18, ResNet50 and EfficientNet models, which are FastAI, and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based deep learning models, were used. Results: Despite the complexity of electroencephalography data, CNN-based models in the study were successful in capturing different aspects of neurophysiological activity. The best performance was obtained from the ResNet-50 model with an accuracy rate of 97%. Afterwards, the classification process was finalized with 95% ResNet-18, and 83% EfficientNet models, respectively. Conclusion: It is thought that the classification performance of the result obtained in the application is promising, and may be a guide for future studies.