AUTHOR=Al-Hadeethi Hanan , Abdulla Shahab , Diykh Mohammed , Deo Ravinesh C. , Green Jonathan H. TITLE=An Eigenvalues-Based Covariance Matrix Bootstrap Model Integrated With Support Vector Machines for Multichannel EEG Signals Analysis JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroinformatics VOLUME=Volume 15 - 2021 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroinformatics/articles/10.3389/fninf.2021.808339 DOI=10.3389/fninf.2021.808339 ISSN=1662-5196 ABSTRACT=Identification of alcoholism is clinically important because of the way it affects the operation of the brain. Alcoholics are more vulnerable to health issues, such as immune disorders, high blood pressure, brain anomalies, and heart problems. These health issues are also a significant cost to national health systems. To help health professionals diagnose the disease with a high rate of accuracy, there is an urgent need to create accurate and automated diagnosis systems capable of classifying human bio-signals. In this study, an automatic system, denoted as (CT-BS- Cov-Eig based FOA-F-SVM), has been proposed to detect prevalence and health effects of alcoholism from multi-channel EEG signals. The EEG signals are segmented into small intervals, with each segment passed to a clustering technique-based bootstrap (CT-BS) for selection of modelling samples. A covariance matrix method with its eigenvalues (Cov-Eig) is integrated with the CT-BS system and applied for useful feature extraction related to alcoholism. To select most relevant features, a non-parametric approach is adopted, and to classify the extracted features, a radius-margin-based support vector machine (F-SVM) with a fruit fly optimisation algorithm (FOA), (i.e., FOA-F-SVM) is utilised. To assess the performance of the proposed CT-BS model, different types of evaluation methods are employed, and the proposed model is compared with state-of-the-art models to benchmark the overall effectiveness of the newly designed system for EEG signals. The results in this study show that the proposed CT-BS model is more effective than the other commonly used methods and yields a high accuracy rate of 99%. In comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms tested on identical databases describing the capability of the newly proposed FOA-F-SVM method, the study ascertains the proposed model as a promising medical diagnostic tool with potential implementation in automated alcoholism detection systems used by clinicians and other health practitioners. The proposed model, adopted as an expert system where EEG data could be classified through advanced pattern recognition techniques, can assist neurologists and other health professionals in accurate and reliable diagnosis and treatment decisions related to alcoholism.