Sinusoidal Signal Assisted Multivariate Empirical Mode Decomposition for Brain-Computer Interfaces

IEEE J Biomed Health Inform. 2018 Sep;22(5):1373-1384. doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2017.2775657. Epub 2017 Nov 20.

Abstract

A brain-computer interface (BCI) is a communication approach that permits cerebral activity to control computers or external devices. Brain electrical activity recorded with electroencephalography (EEG) is most commonly used for BCI. Noise-assisted multivariate empirical mode decomposition (NA-MEMD) is a data-driven time-frequency analysis method that can be applied to nonlinear and nonstationary EEG signals for BCI data processing. However, because white Gaussian noise occupies a broad range of frequencies, some redundant components are introduced. To solve this leakage problem, in this study, we propose using a sinusoidal assisted signal that occupies the same frequency ranges as the original signals to improve MEMD performance. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed sinusoidal signal assisted MEMD (SA-MEMD) method, we compared the decomposition performances of MEMD, NA-MEMD, and the proposed SA-MEMD using synthetic signals and a real-world BCI dataset. The spectral decomposition results indicate that the proposed SA-MEMD can avoid the generation of redundant components and over decomposition, thus, substantially reduce the mode mixing and misalignment that occurs in MEMD and NA-MEMD. Moreover, using SA-MEMD as a signal preprocessing method instead of MEMD or NA-MEMD can significantly improve BCI classification accuracy and reduce calculation time, which indicates that SA-MEMD is a powerful spectral decomposition method for BCI.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Algorithms
  • Brain / physiology
  • Brain-Computer Interfaces*
  • Electroencephalography / methods*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Imagination / physiology
  • Multivariate Analysis
  • Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted*