Multi-Valued Decision Making for Transitional Stochastic Event: Determination of Sleep Stages through EEG Record

Multi-valued decision making for transitional stochastic events was newly derived based on conditional probability of database. The two values (on-off) decision making method without transition had been proposed by one of the author in a previous work for a purpose of realizing human on-off decision making. The current method is an extension of the previous on-off decision making. By combining the conditional probability and the transitional probability, the closed form of the algorithm for the multi-valued transitional decision making was derived. The proposed multi-valued decision making was successfully applied to the determination of the five levels of the vigilance of a subject during the EEG recording; awake stage, drowsy stage and sleeping stages (stage 1, stage 2/3, REM (rapid eye movement)). The method for determining the vigilance level can be directly usable for the two purposes; selection of awake EEG segments for automatic EEG interpretation, and determination of sleep stages through sleep EEG. The proposed multi-valued decision making with a mathematical background of the probability can be applicable widely, in industries and in medical fields for purposes of the multi-valued decision making.