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Objective To develop and validate two automatic methods for the detection of burst and interburst periods in preterm eight-channel electroencephalographs (EEG). To perform a detailed analysis of interobserver agreement on burst and interburst periods and use this as a benchmark for the performance of the automatic methods. To examine mathematical features of the EEG signal and their potential correlation with gestational age. Methods Multi-channel EEG from 36 infants, born at less than 30 weeks gestation was utilised, with a 10 min artifact-free epoch selected for each subject. Three independent expert observers annotated all EEG activity bursts in the dataset. Two automatic algorithms for burst/interburst detection were applied to the EEG data and their performances were analysed and compared with interobserver agreement. A total of 12 mathematical features of the EEG signal were calculated and correlated with gestational age. Results The mean interobserver agreement was found to be 77% while mean algorithm/observer agreement was 81%. Six of the mathematical features calculated (spectral entropy, Higuchi fractal dimension, spectral edge frequency, variance, extrema median and Hilberts transform amplitude) were found to have significant correlation with gestational age. Conclusions Automatic detection of burst/interburst periods has been performed in multi-channel EEG of 36 preterm infants. The algorithm agreement with expert observers is found to be on a par with interobserver agreement. Mathematical features of EEG have been calculated which show significant correlation with gestational age. Significance Automatic analysis of preterm multi-channel EEG is possible. The methods described here have the potential to be incorporated into a fully automatic system to quantitatively assess brain maturity from preterm EEG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]