SLA-MLP: Enhancing Sleep Stage Analysis from EEG Signals Using Multilayer Perceptron Networks

Background/Objectives: Sleep stage analysis is considered to be the key factor for understanding and diagnosing various sleep disorders, as it provides insights into sleep quality and overall health. Methods: Traditional methods of sleep stage classification, such as manual scoring and basic machine learning approaches, often suffer from limitations including subjective biases, limited scalability, and inadequate accuracy. Existing deep learning models have improved the accuracy of sleep stage classification but still face challenges such as overfitting, computational inefficiencies, and difficulties in handling imbalanced datasets. To address these challenges, we propose the Sleep Stage Analysis with Multilayer Perceptron (SLA-MLP) model. Results: SLA-MLP leverages advanced deep learning techniques to enhance the classification of sleep stages from EEG signals. The key steps of this approach include data collection, where diverse and high-quality EEG data are gathered; preprocessing, which involves signal cropping, spectrogram conversion, and normalization to prepare the data for analysis; data balancing, where class weights are adjusted to address any imbalances in the dataset; feature extraction, utilizing Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCNs) to extract meaningful features from the EEG signals; and final classification, applying a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) to accurately predict sleep stages. Conclusions: SLA-MLP demonstrates superior performance compared to traditional methods by effectively addressing the limitations of existing models. Its robust preprocessing techniques, advanced feature extraction, and adaptive data balancing strategies collectively contribute to obtaining more accurate results, having an accuracy of 97.23% for the S-DSI, 96.23 for the S-DSII and 97.23% for the S-DSIII dataset. This model offers a significant advancement in the field, providing a more precise tool for sleep research and clinical applications.