Analysis of MEG recordings from Alzheimer's disease patients with sample and multiscale entropies

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most prominent neurodegenerative disorders. The aim of this study is to analyze the magnetoencephalogram (MEG) background activity in AD patients using sample entropy (SampEn) and multiscale entropy (MSE). The former quantifies the signal regularity, while the latter is a complexity measure. These concepts, irregularity and complexity, are linked although the relationship is not straightforward. Five minutes of recording were acquired with a 148-channel whole-head magnetometer in 20 patients with probable AD and 21 control subjects. Our results show that MEG recordings are less complex and more regular in AD patients than in control subjects. Significant differences between both groups were found in some MEG channels with both methods (P < 0.01, Student's t-test with Bonferroni's correction). Using receiver operating characteristic curves, accuracies of 75.6% with SampEn and of 87.8% with MSE were reached. Our findings show the usefulness of these entropy measures to increase our insight into AD.