Entropy of difference works similarly to permutation entropy for the assessment of anesthesia and sleep EEG despite the lower computational effort.

EEG monitoring during anesthesia or for diagnosing sleep disorders is a common standard. Different approaches for measuring the important information of this biosignal are used. The most often and efficient one for entropic parameters is permutation entropy as it can distinguish the vigilance states in the different settings. Due to high calculation times, it has mostly been used for low orders, although it shows good results even for higher orders. Entropy of difference has a similar way of extracting information from the EEG as permutation entropy. Both parameters and different algorithms for encoding the associated patterns in the signal are described. The runtimes of both entropic measures are compared, not only for the needed encoding but also for calculating the value itself. The mutual information that both parameters extract is measured with the AUC for a linear discriminant analysis classifier. Entropy of difference shows a smaller calculation time than permutation entropy. The reduction is much larger for higher orders, some of them can even only be computed with the entropy of difference. The distinguishing of the vigilance states between both measures is similar as the AUC values for the classification do not differ significantly. As the runtimes for the entropy of difference are smaller than for the permutation entropy, even though the performance stays the same, we state the entropy of difference could be a useful method for analyzing EEG data. Higher orders of entropic features may also be investigated better and more easily.