Converting Your Thoughts to Texts: Enabling Brain Typing via Deep Feature Learning of EEG Signals

An electroencephalography (EEG) based Brain Computer Interface (BCI) enables people to communicate with the outside world by interpreting the EEG signals of their brains to interact with devices such as wheelchairs and intelligent robots. More specifically, motor imagery EEG (MI-EEG), which reflects a subjects active intent, is attracting increasing attention for a variety of BCI applications. Accurate classification of MI-EEG signals while essential for effective operation of BCI systems, is challenging due to the significant noise inherent in the signals and the lack of informative correlation between the signals and brain activities. In this paper, we propose a novel deep neural network based learning framework that affords perceptive insights into the relationship between the MI-EEG data and brain activities. We design a joint convolutional recurrent neural network that simultaneously learns robust high-level feature presentations through low-dimensional dense embeddings from raw MI-EEG signals. We also employ an Autoencoder layer to eliminate various artifacts such as background activities. The proposed approach has been evaluated extensively on a large- scale public MI-EEG dataset and a limited but easy-to-deploy dataset collected in our lab. The results show that our approach outperforms a series of baselines and the competitive state-of-the- art methods, yielding a classification accuracy of 95.53%. The applicability of our proposed approach is further demonstrated with a practical BCI system for typing.Comment: 10 page

Determining States of Movement in Humans Using Minimally Processed EEG Signals and Various Classification Methods

Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive technique used in both clinical and research settings to record neuronal signaling in the brain. The location of an EEG signal as well as the frequencies at which its neuronal constituents fire correlate with behavioral tasks, including discrete states of motor activity. Due to the number of channels and fine temporal resolution of EEG, a dense, high-dimensional dataset is collected. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a treatment that has been suggested to improve motor functions of Parkinson’s disease and chronic stroke patients when stimulation occurs during a motor task. tDCS is commonly administered without taking biofeedback such as brain state into account. Additionally, the administration of tDCS by a technician during motor tasks is a tiresome process. Machine learning and deep learning algorithms are often used to perform classification tasks on high-dimensional data, and have been successfully used to classify movement states based on EEG features. In this thesis, a program capable of performing live classification of motor state using machine learning and EEG as biofeedback is proposed. This program would allow for the development of a device that optimally administers tDCS dosage during motor tasks. This is achieved by surveying the literature for motor classification techniques based on EEG signals, recreating the methods in the surveyed literature, measuring their accuracy, and creating an application to perform online capturing and analysis of EEG recordings using the classifier with the highest accuracy to demonstrate the feasibility of real-time classification. The highest accuracy of motor classification is achieved by training a random forest on binned spectral decomposition from a normalized signal. While live classification was successfully performed, accuracy was limited by external changes to the recording environment, skewing the input to the trained model

Support vector machines to detect physiological patterns for EEG and EMG-based human-computer interaction:a review

Support vector machines (SVMs) are widely used classifiers for detecting physiological patterns in human-computer interaction (HCI). Their success is due to their versatility, robustness and large availability of free dedicated toolboxes. Frequently in the literature, insufficient details about the SVM implementation and/or parameters selection are reported, making it impossible to reproduce study analysis and results. In order to perform an optimized classification and report a proper description of the results, it is necessary to have a comprehensive critical overview of the applications of SVM. The aim of this paper is to provide a review of the usage of SVM in the determination of brain and muscle patterns for HCI, by focusing on electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG) techniques. In particular, an overview of the basic principles of SVM theory is outlined, together with a description of several relevant literature implementations. Furthermore, details concerning reviewed papers are listed in tables and statistics of SVM use in the literature are presented. Suitability of SVM for HCI is discussed and critical comparisons with other classifiers are reported

Empirical Comparison of Machine Learning Algorithms Based on EEG data

Selle töö eesmärgiks on võrrelda erinevaid masinõppealgoritme ning üritada leida nende hulgast parim EEG andmete klassifitseerimise jaoks. Selle saavutamiseks klassifitseeriti 10 inimese andmeid 10 masinõppealgoritmi poolt. Algoritme võrreldi kolmel viisil: esiteks võrreldi neid kolme erineva jõudlust iseloomustava näitaja alusel, teiseks kasutati klasteranalüüsi meetodeid ja dendrogramme ning viimaks kasutati selleks korrelatsioonimaatrikseid. Saadud võrdluse tulemused näitavad, et optimeerimata parameetrite korral on logistilise regressiooni mudel kõige efektiivsem algoritm EEG andmete klassifitseerimisel. Optimeeritud parameetrite korral on kõige efektiivsemaks algoritmiks juhumets.The aim of this work is to compare different machine learning algorithms in an attempt to find the best one for classifying EEG data. In order to achieve this, the data from ten subjects were classified by ten machine learning algorithms. The algorithms were compared in three ways: Firstly, they were compared by using three performance metrics, secondly, by using clustergrams and lastly, by using corralation matrices. The results from the comparison show that the without parameter optimization, logistic regression model is the most efficient algorithm for classifying EEG data. However, with parameter optimization, random forest is the most efficient algorithm for classifying EEG data

Improving EEG-Based Motor Imagery Classification for Real-Time Applications Using the QSA Method

We present an improvement to the quaternion-based signal analysis (QSA) technique to extract electroencephalography (EEG) signal features with a view to developing real-time applications, particularly in motor imagery (IM) cognitive processes. The proposed methodology (iQSA, improved QSA) extracts features such as the average, variance, homogeneity, and contrast of EEG signals related to motor imagery in a more efficient manner (i.e., by reducing the number of samples needed to classify the signal and improving the classification percentage) compared to the original QSA technique. Specifically, we can sample the signal in variable time periods (from 0.5 s to 3 s, in half-a-second intervals) to determine the relationship between the number of samples and their effectiveness in classifying signals. In addition, to strengthen the classification process a number of boosting-technique-based decision trees were implemented. The results show an 82.30% accuracy rate for 0.5 s samples and 73.16% for 3 s samples. This is a significant improvement compared to the original QSA technique that offered results from 33.31% to 40.82% without sampling window and from 33.44% to 41.07% with sampling window, respectively. We can thus conclude that iQSA is better suited to develop real-time applications

A study on temporal segmentation strategies for extracting common spatial patterns for brain computer interfacing

Brain computer interfaces (BCI) create a new approach to human computer communication, allowing the user to control a system simply by performing mental tasks such as motor imagery. This paper proposes and analyses different strategies for time segmentation in extracting common spatial patterns of the brain signals associated to these tasks leading to an improvement of BCI performance