# DiffEEG: A Self-Supervised Denoising Diffusion Model for Learning EEG Generic Representations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.11578 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.11578/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Medical imaging and segmentation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 17 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Medical imaging and segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/medical-imaging-and-segmentation/)

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [EEGNet: A Compact Convolutional Network for EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08024/) (2016)
- [Large Brain Model for Learning Generic Representations with Tremendous EEG Data in BCI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18765/) (2024)
- [Deep learning-based electroencephalography analysis: a systematic review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05498/) (2019)
- [Transformer-based Spatial-Temporal Feature Learning for EEG Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11170/) (2021)
- [BrainBERT: Self-supervised representation learning for intracranial recordings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14367/) (2023)
- [EEGFormer: Towards Transferable and Interpretable Large-Scale EEG Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10278/) (2024)
- [EEG Foundation Models: A Critical Review of Current Progress and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11783/) (2025)
- [BIOT: Cross-data Biosignal Learning in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10351/) (2023)
- [Adversarial Representation Learning for Robust Patient-Independent Epileptic Seizure Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10868/) (2019)
- [Reinforcement Learning with Automated Auxiliary Loss Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.06041/) (2022)
- [BioSerenity-E1: a self-supervised EEG model for medical applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10362/) (2025)
- [Wavelet-Based Multi-Class Seizure Type Classification System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00511/) (2022)
- [Multi-Branch Mutual-Distillation Transformer for EEG-Based Seizure Subtype Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15224/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning for EEG-based seizure detection faces critical challenges: severe annotation scarcity and extreme class imbalance, where ictal events comprise less than 10% of clinical recordings. We present DiffEEG, a 9.6M-parameter self-supervised foundation model that addresses both limitations through denoising diffusion pre-training and reinforcement learning (RL)-based fine-tuning. Pre-trained on 1.3M unlabeled segments from the Temple University Hospital Seizure Corpus (TUHSZ), DiffEEG learns generic neural representations via a 1D U-Net with multi-head self-attention. For downstream adaptation, a reinforced decision layer employs policy gradient optimization to directly maximize F1-score, prioritizing sensitivity to rare seizure events over overall accuracy. Under strict patient-wise evaluation (279 patients, Leave-One-Fold-Out), DiffEEG achieves 61% accuracy and 59% F1 for 4-class seizure subtyping, and 81% accuracy with 85% weighted F1 for binary detection, maintaining clinically viable seizure recall (59%) despite extreme imbalance (6.7% prevalence). Segment-level evaluation establishes an upper bound of 97.6% accuracy, confirming strong architectural capacity. DiffEEG demonstrates that diffusion-based pre-training combined with metric-aware reinforcement learning enables clinically deployable seizure monitoring with minimal labeled data requirements.