Universal EEG Epilepsy Detection via Evidential Multi-View De-Biasing

Abstract

Epilepsy is a widespread neurological disorder characterized by highly patient-specific EEG patterns. Existing EEG-based seizure detection methods either train individualized models for each patient or adapt models pre-trained on known patients to new ones. However, when encountering previously unseen patients, these methods typically require retraining or fine-tuning, which limits their practical utility in clinical settings. This limitation can be linked to biases caused by patient-specific variations, which obscure the underlying pathological patterns of seizures. To address this, we propose an evidential multi-view framework that reinforces the learning of core epileptic features by promoting consistency across multiple views and reducing reliance on high-uncertainty, patient-specific segments. Specifically, we introduce Bias-guided Fisher-Evidential Multi-View Learning (BF-EML) to guide the model toward discovering intrinsic seizure patterns. BF-EML employs a two-stage training architecture: In Stage 1, we use the Fisher Information Matrix to reorder EEG segments by uncertainty and deliberately train a biased feature generator on low-evidence segments. In Stage 2, we design a dual-branch network where the biased and unbiased branches are alternately trained, encouraging the unbiased branch to reduce its reliance on patient-specific biases. Finally, we introduce a shift-calibrated fusion strategy to enhance the consistency of pathogenic feature integration. Extensive experiments on public datasets and a clinical dataset demonstrate that our method achieves superior performance in both single- and multi-patient scenarios. Importantly, it generalizes well to unseen patients without the need for retraining.