Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) are the visual system responses to a repetitive visual stimulus flickering with the constant frequency and of great importance in the study of brain activity using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. However, the reference influence for the investigation of SSVEP is generally not considered in previous work. In this study a new approach that combined the canonical correlation analysis with infinite reference (ICCA) was proposed to enhance the accuracy of frequency recognition of SSVEP recordings. Compared with the widely used periodogram method (PM), ICCA is able to achieve higher recognition accuracy when extracts frequency within a short span. Further, the recognition results suggested that ICCA is a very robust tool to study the brain computer interface (BCI) based on SSVEP.
Keywords: Steady-state visual evoked potentials; brain computer interface; canonical correlation analysis with infinite reference; frequency recognition; periodogram.