AccScience Publishing / GTM / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/GTM026220022
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Channel reduction in AdaBoost ensemble models for energy-efficient ambulatory seizure detection

Aangi Shah1 Milan Toma1*
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1 Algorithmic Medicine Laboratory, Department of Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine, College of Osteopathic Medicine, New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury, New York, United States of America
Global Translational Medicine, 026220022 https://doi.org/10.36922/GTM026220022
Received: 26 May 2026 | Revised: 2 June 2026 | Accepted: 10 July 2026 | Published online: 30 July 2026
© 2026 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
Abstract

Wearable electroencephalogram (EEG) devices offer promising solutions for continuous seizure monitoring in out-of-hospital settings. However, the adoption of medical-grade wearable devices remains limited by the power consumption demands of edge computing, where each active EEG channel contributes to energy expenditure through signal processing and feature extraction operations. Optimizing algorithms through feature reduction may extend battery life without compromising diagnostic reliability. This study evaluated a feature reduction strategy for a 100-tree AdaBoost ensemble model applied to binary seizure detection using the Bangalore EEG Epilepsy Dataset, comprising recordings from 60 subjects. A patient-aware data partitioning scheme (70/15/15 split) was implemented to ensure complete separation of patient identities across training, validation, and testing subsets. Feature importance scores were extracted from the trained ensemble to identify less discriminative EEG channels, and classification performance was compared between a baseline 16-channel configuration and a reduced 12-channel configuration following removal of the four least important channels. The baseline 16-channel model achieved 97.56% test accuracy, 97.29% sensitivity, 98.50% specificity, and a 2.71% seizure miss rate. Following the removal of channels x5, x9, x11, and x13, the reduced 12-channel model achieved 97.11% test accuracy, 96.71% sensitivity, 98.50% specificity, and a 3.29% seizure miss rate. The 25% reduction in active channels resulted in only a 0.45 percentage-point decrease in accuracy while yielding an estimated 33.33% theoretical extension in battery operating duration. Strategic channel reduction based on feature importance analysis can improve computational efficiency while maintaining comparable seizure detection performance. These findings support the development of energy-efficient, long-term ambulatory EEG monitoring devices that balance diagnostic reliability with extended operational duration.

Graphical abstract
Keywords
Seizure detection
AdaBoost ensemble
Electroencephalogram
Feature reduction
Wearable devices
Machine learning
Funding
The authors declare that no external financial support or grants were received from any funding agency or commercial organization to perform the research, analysis, or publication of this article. This work was supported solely by institutional resources provided by the authors’ affiliated institutions.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare they have no competing interests.
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Global Translational Medicine, Electronic ISSN: 2811-0021 Print ISSN: 3060-8600, Published by AccScience Publishing