Use of Empirical Mode Decomposition in ERP Analysis to Classify Familial Risk and Diagnostic Outcomes for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Event-related potentials (ERPs) activated by faces and gaze processing are found in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the early stages of their development and may serve as a putative biomarker to supplement behavioral diagnosis. We present a novel approach to the classification of visual ERPs collected from 6-month-old infants using intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) derived from empirical mode decomposition (EMD). Selected features were used as inputs to two machine learning methods (support vector machines and -nearest neighbors (-NN)) using nested cross validation. Different runs were executed for the modelling and classification of the participants in the control and high-risk (HR) groups and the classification of diagnosis outcome within the high-risk group: HR-ASD and HR-noASD. The highest accuracy in the classification of familial risk was 88.44%, achieved using a support vector machine (SVM). A maximum accuracy of 74.00% for classifying infants at risk who go on to develop ASD vs. those who do not was achieved through -NN. IMF-based extracted features were highly effective in classifying infants by risk status, but less effective by diagnostic outcome. Advanced signal analysis of ERPs integrated with machine learning may be considered a first step toward the development of an early biomarker for ASD.