Metaheuristic optimized time–frequency features for enhancing Alzheimer’s disease identification

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic disorder characterized by progressive cognitive dysfunctions and memory loss. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive tool to detect AD using machine learning models and signal-derived features. Feature selection enhances AD detection performance, reduces training and testing time, and builds simpler models. Metaheuristic algorithms (MHAs) have successfully selected optimum features in several classification tasks and can be valuable in enhancing AD detection. In this work, an AD detection model is proposed based on a systematic investigation of adaptive signal decomposition techniques and MHAs. The four techniques comprising empirical mode decomposition, variational mode decomposition, discrete wavelet transform, and Low-Complexity Orthogonal Wavelet Filter Banks (LCOWFBs) decompose EEG signals into subbands. Thirty-four features based on signal, temporal, spectral, and entropy analysis are extracted for each subband. The salient features are selected using seven different MHAs: particle swarm algorithm, salp swarm algorithm, reptile search (RSA), Grey Wolf, dwarf mongoose optimization, snake optimizer, and Fick’s law algorithm (FLA). The two publicly available AD EEG datasets validated the performance of the proposed framework. LCOWFBs achieved the highest binary classification accuracy of 99.72% using 15 salient features selected by RSA and multi-class accuracy of 88.92% with seven salient features selected by FLA. The present method investigates brain regions that are affected by AD. The results indicate that the combination of LCOWFBs and RSA achieved maximum AD detection performance for both datasets with shorter computational time than earlier reported methods in the literature. The present model can be extended to identify chronic disorders, including hypertension, sleep disorders, and Parkinson’s disease. •Developing an Metaheuristic Algorithms-based optimal feature selection model for the detection of AD and MCI from normal.•Presenting the signal processing decomposition techniques EMD, VMD, DWT, and LCOWFBs for feature extraction in bandwidth-duration domain.•Computing temporal, spectral, and entropy-based thirty-five features to explore the significant brain regions.•Evaluating classification performance on two publically available datasets with tuned hyper-parameters of MHAs methods for AD and MCI detection.•Enhancing AD detection performance by feature selection of present model and comparing resea