# Federated GNNs for EEG-Based Stroke Assessment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02286 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02286/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Nov 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [Neural Message Passing for Quantum Chemistry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.01212/) (2017)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [Fast Graph Representation Learning with PyTorch Geometric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.02428/) (2019)
- [Federated Learning: Challenges, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07873/) (2019)
- [Deeper Insights into Graph Convolutional Networks for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07606/) (2018)
- [How Attentive are Graph Attention Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.14491/) (2021)
- [The Future of Digital Health with Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08119/) (2020)
- [A Survey on Oversmoothing in Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10993/) (2023)
- [HHHFL: Hierarchical Heterogeneous Horizontal Federated Learning for Electroencephalography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05784/) (2019)
- [Scaling Neuroscience Research using Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08440/) (2021)
- [Towards Explainable Graph Neural Networks for Neurological Evaluation on EEG Signals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.07199/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Machine learning (ML) has the potential to become an essential tool in supporting clinical decision-making processes, offering enhanced diagnostic capabilities and personalized treatment plans. However, outsourcing medical records to train ML models using patient data raises legal, privacy, and security concerns. Federated learning has emerged as a promising paradigm for collaborative ML, meeting healthcare institutions' requirements for robust models without sharing sensitive data and compromising patient privacy. This study proposes a novel method that combines federated learning (FL) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to predict stroke severity using electroencephalography (EEG) signals across multiple medical institutions. Our approach enables multiple hospitals to jointly train a shared GNN model on their local EEG data without exchanging patient information. Specifically, we address a regression problem by predicting the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), a key indicator of stroke severity. The proposed model leverages a masked self-attention mechanism to capture salient brain connectivity patterns and employs EdgeSHAP to provide post-hoc explanations of the neurological states after a stroke. We evaluated our method on EEG recordings from four institutions, achieving a mean absolute error (MAE) of 3.23 in predicting NIHSS, close to the average error made by human experts (MAE ≈ 3.0). This demonstrates the method's effectiveness in providing accurate and explainable predictions while maintaining data privacy.