A Novel Hybrid Approach for Drowsiness Detection Using EEG Scalograms to Overcome Inter-Subject Variability

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 25; no. 17; p. 5530
• Main Authors: Zayed, Aymen, Belhadj, Nidhameddine, Ben Khalifa, Khaled, Valderrama, Carlos, Bedoui, Mohamed Hedi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 05.09.2025
• Subjects: Accuracy; Algorithms; Artificial intelligence; Brain - physiology; Brain research; Classification; CNN; deep learning; drowsiness; EEG; Electrodes; Electroencephalography; Electroencephalography - methods; Eye movements; Fourier transforms; Health care industry; Humans; Machine learning; Methods; Neural networks; Neural Networks, Computer; scalogram; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Sleep Stages - physiology; Support Vector Machine; transfer learning; Wavelet Analysis; Wavelet transforms; New York; Tunisia; Germany; deep learning; transfer learning; drowsiness; CNN; scalogram; EEG
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s25175530

Drowsiness constitutes a significant risk factor in diverse occupational settings, including healthcare, industry, construction, and transportation, contributing to accidents, injuries, and fatalities. Electroencephalography (EEG) signals, offering direct measurements of brain activity, have emerged as a promising modality for drowsiness detection. However, the inherent non-stationary nature of EEG signals, coupled with substantial inter-subject variability, presents considerable challenges for reliable drowsiness detection. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a hybrid approach combining convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which excel at feature extraction, and support vector machines (SVMs) for drowsiness detection. The framework consists of two modules: a CNN for feature extraction from EEG scalograms generated by the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT), and an SVM for classification. The proposed approach is compared with 1D CNNs (using raw EEG signals) and transfer learning models such as VGG16 and ResNet50 to identify the most effective method for minimizing inter-subject variability and improving detection accuracy. Experimental evaluations, conducted on the publicly available DROZY EEG dataset, show that the CNN-SVM model, utilizing 2D scalograms, achieves an accuracy of 98.33%, outperforming both 1D CNNs and transfer learning models. These findings highlight the effectiveness of the hybrid CNN-SVM approach for robust and accurate drowsiness detection using EEG, offering significant potential for enhancing safety in high-risk work environments.