Random Subspace Ensemble Learning for Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Brain-Computer Interfaces

Abstract

The feasibility of the random subspace ensemble learning method was explored to improve the performance of functional near-infrared spectroscopy-based brain-computer interfaces (fNIRS-BCIs). Feature vectors have been constructed using the temporal characteristics of concentration changes in fNIRS chromophores such as mean, slope, and variance to implement fNIRS-BCIs systems. The mean and slope, which are the most popular features in fNIRS-BCIs, were adopted. Linear support vector machine and linear discriminant analysis were employed, respectively, as a single strong learner and multiple weak learners. All features in every channel and available time window were employed to train the strong learner, and the feature subsets were selected at random to train multiple weak learners. It was determined that random subspace ensemble learning is beneficial to enhance the performance of fNIRS-BCIs.

Keywords: brain-computer interface; ensemble learning; functional near-infrared spectroscopy; linear discriminant analysis; random subspace; support vector machine.