Pattern recognition of motor imagery EEG using
wavelet transform
Pattern recognition of motor imagery EEG using
wavelet transform
Bao-Guo Xu & Ai-Guo Song
School of Instrument Science and Engineering Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China.
This paper presents a novel effective method for
ABSTRACT feature extraction of motor imaginary. We combine
the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) with
Brain-computer interface (BCI) provides new autoregressive model (AR) to extract more useful
communication and control channels that doinformation for non-stationary EEG signals. Apply-
not depend on the brain's normal output ofing this method to analyze the Graz dataset for BCI
peripheral nerves and muscles. In this paper,competition 2003, we achieved the classification
we report on results of developing a singleaccuracy of 90.0%.
trial online motor imagery feature extraction
method for BCI. The wavelet coefficients and 2. METHODOLOGY
autoregressive parameter model was used to
extract the features from the motor imagery 2.1. Experimental paradigm
EEG and the linear discriminant analysisThe data set was provided by department of medical
based on mahalanobis distance was utilizedinformatics, institute for biomedical engineering, uni-
to classify the pattern of left and right hand versity of technology Graz [5]. It was recorded from
movement imagery. The performance wasa normal subject (female, 25y) during a feedback ses-
tested by the Graz dataset for BCI competitionsion. The subject sat in a relaxing chair with armrests.
The task was to control a feedback bar by means of
2003 and the satisfactory results are obtained
imagery left or right hand movements. The order of
with an error rate as low as 10.0%.
left and right cues was random.
shows the timing of the experiment. The
first 2s was quite; at t=2s an acoustic stimulus indi-
cated the beginning of the trial; the trigger channel
(#4) went from low to high, and a cross + was dis-
played for 1s; then at t=3s, an arrow (left or right)
1. INTRODUCTIONwas displayed as cue. At the same time the subject
Left and right hand movement imagery can modifywas asked to move a bar into the direction of the cue.
the neuronal activity in the primary sensorimotor The feedback was based on AAR parameters of chan-
areas, leading to the changes of the mu rhythm andnel #1 (C3) and #3 (C4), the AAR parameters were
beta rhythm. BCI requires effective online process-combined with a discriminant analysis into one out-
ing method to classify these EEG signals in order to put parameter.
construct a system enabling severely physically dis-The recording was made using a G.tec amplifier
abled patients to communication with their surround-and a Ag/AgCl electrodes. Three bipolar EEG chan-
ings [1-4].
Keywords Brain-computer interface (BCI); Motor
imagery; Wavelet coefficients; Autoregressive
model
Figure 1
Figure1. Timing scheme.Figure 2.Electrode positions.
J. Biomedical Science and Engineering, 2008, 1, 64-67Scientific
Research
Publishing
JBiSE
Published Online May 2008 in SciRes.http://www.srpublishing.org/journal/jbise
FeeDback period With Cue
Trigger
Beep
Time/s
1 23
1 23
SciRes Copyright ©2008
nance. This led us to use wavelet decomposition to
extract the differences between the two motor imag-
ery tasks.
2.3. Procedure
The flow chart of processing single-trial motor imag-
ery EEG is shown as in. First, the time win-
dow was used to filter the data in temporal domain in
order to get the segment that contained the most obvi-
ous difference between the two motor imagery tasks.
Then EEG signals were decomposed into the fre-
quency sub-bands using DWT and a set for statistical
features was extracted from the sub-bands to repre-
sent the distribution of wavelet coefficients accord-
ing to the characteristics of motor imagery EEG sig-
nals.Also the sixth-order AR coefficients of segmen-
tation EEG signals were estimated using Burg's algo-
rithm. Next, the combination features of wavelet coef-
nels (anterior '+', posterior '-') were measured over ficients and the AR coefficients were used as an input
C3, Cz and C4 []. The EEG was sampledvector. Finally linear discriminant analysis (LDA)
with 128Hz, it was filtered between 0.5 and 30Hz.based on mahalanobis distance was utilized to clas-
Similar experiments are described in [6].sify computed features into different categories that
The experiment consists of 7 runs with 40 trialsrepresent the left or right hand movement imagery.
each.All runs were conducted on the same day with
several minutes break durrng experiment. One half of2.4. Feature extraction using discrete wavelet
the datasets are provided for training; others are for transforms
evaluating the performance of the system.Classic Fourier transform has succeeded in station-
ary signals processing. However, EEG signal con-
2.2. Feature considerationtains non-stationary or transitory characteristics.
Central brain oscillations in the mu rhythm in the Thus it is not suitable to directly apply Fourier trans-
range of 7-12Hz and beta above 13Hz bands are form to such signals. The wavelet transform decom-
strongly related to sensorimotor tasks. Sensory stim-poses a signal into a set of functions obtained by
ulation, motor behavior, mental imagery can change shifting and dilating one single function called
the functional connectivity cortex which results in an mother wavelet [1011]. Continuous wavelet trans-
amplitude suppression or in an amplitude enhance-form is given by
ment .This phenomenon was also called event-
related desynchronization (ERD) and event-related
synchronization (ERS) [78]. Left and right hand
movement imagery is typically accompanied with
ERD in the mu and beta rhythms and has the charac-
teristic of contralateral dominance.Where (t) is the mother wavelet, is the scale
The power spectrums on C3 and C4 of the trainingparameter andis the shift parameter. In principle
set are shown in . It indicates that the powerthe CWT produced an infinite number of coefficients,
spectrums mainly distribute in the range of 8-13Hzthus it provides a redundant representation of the sig-
and 19-24Hz.In addition, the power of mu and betanal.
rhythms evoked by right hand movement imagery is The DWT provides a highly efficient wavelet rep-
lower than that of left hand movement imagery for resentation that can be implemented with a simple
channel C3, and it is contrary for channel C4 which is recursive filter scheme and the original signal recon-
consistent with the principle of contralateral domi-struction can be obtained by an inverse filter. The pro-
Figure 4
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4.Flow chart of the data processing.
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B.G. Xuet al./J. Biomedical Science and Engineering 1 (2008) 64-67 65
Figure 3.Average power spectrums on channel C3 and C4.
Frequency(HZ)
Spectram(db)
0
10
20 30010
5
15
25
20
Frequency(HZ)
20 30010
0
10
Channel C3Channel C4
18
16
14
12
8
6
4
2
Spectram(db)
Left Imagery
Right Imagery
Left Imagery
Right Imagery
Statistical features wavelet
Coefficients
Coefficients of autoregressive
model
EEG temporal filterlinear discriminant
analysis
cedure of multi-resolution decomposition of a signal trum and too high tends to introduce spurious peaks.
x[n] is schematically shown in .Here order six was used based on the suggestions [9].
The number of levels of decomposition is chosen Then the Burg's method was used to estimate the
on the basis of the dominant frequency components AR coefficients. This method is more accurate and
of the signal. According to the motor imagery EEG yields better resolution without the problem of spec-
signals itself, we chose the level of 4 and the wavelet tral 'leakage' as compared to other methods such as
of Daubechies order 10.As a result, the EEG signal is Levison-Durbin as it uses the data points directly. In
decomposed into the details D1-D3 and approxima-addition, the Burg's method can minimize both for-
tionA3. The ranges of different frequency band areward and backward error.
shown in .Next the AR coefficients were computed and we
The extracted wavelet coefficients show the distri-got six coefficients for each channel, giving a total of
bution of the motor imagery signal in time and fre-12AR coefficients features for each EEG segment for
quency. It can be seen from the table that the compo-a motor imagery task.
nent D3 decomposition is within the mu rhythm, D2
is within the beta rhythm. Statistics over the set of2.6. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA)
wavelet coefficients were computed so as to reduceLDA is one of the most effective linear classification
the total dimension of the feature vectors. The statis-methods for brain-computer interface, and it requires
tical features of each sub-band are as follows:fewer examples for obtaining a reliable classifier out-
(1) Mean of the absolute values of the coefficients.put [12].
(2) Standard deviation of the coefficients.As to the LDA method, assume that each data ele-
(3)Average power of the wavelet coefficients.ment shas m features. Then, an elements is one
ii
These features represent the frequency distribu-point in a dimensional feature space. The number of
tion and the amount of changes in frequency distribu-examples is n, each example is assigned to one of two
tion. Thus 12 statistical features of wavelet coeffi-classes C={0,1}; Then,Sis a matrix of size n×m, and
cients are obtained for two channels.Cis a vector of sizen.N. And N are the number of
01
elements for class 0 and 1, respectively.
2.5. Feature extraction using autoregressive The mean of each classc is the mean over all s
ci
model with i being all elements with in classc. The total
EEG signal can be considered as the output of a linear mean of the data is
filter driven by a white noise. This filter, referred to
asAR, is a linear combination of the previous output
itself.A zero-mean, stationary autoregressive pro-
cess of orderp is given by
Wherep is the model order, x(n) is the signal at the
sampled pointn,a(i)is the AR coefficients and(n)
p
is a zero-mean white noise. In application, the values
of thea(i) have to be estimated from the finite sam-
p
ples of datax(1),x(2),x(3),,x(N).
The first important things involved in using AR
model is determining the optimal AR model order
since too low a model order tends to smooth the spec-
Figure 5
Table 1
Figure 5.Decomposition of DWT; h[n] is the high-pass filter; g[n] is the low-pass filter.
Decomposed signal
D1
D2
D3
A3
Frequency range (Hz)
32-64
16-32
8-16
0-8
Level
1
2
3
3
Table 1.Frequencies correspond to different levels of
deposition for daubechies order 10 wavelet with a sample
rate 128HZ.
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66B.G. Xuet al./J. Biomedical Science and Engineering 1 (2008) 64-67
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tion and channel to outside world.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work was founded by the National Basic Research Program of
China (973 Program) (No.2002CB321/02), Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (No.60475034,No.60643007) and 863 High-Tech
project (No.2006AA04Z246).
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Daubechies order 10 gave the best performance and
the recognition rate is as high as 90.0%. Also the
results indicate that method of combining DWT with
AR model are capable of extracting more useful
information from the simultaneously acquired motor
imagery EEG. Furthermore, when the window of 384
samples with a shift of 1 sample was used, maximum
classification accuracy of 92.1% is achieved.
4. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, a novel single-trial motor imagery EEG
classification method is proposed. The pattern classi-
fication techniques as described in this work make
possible the development of a fully automated motor
imagery EEG signals analysis system which is accu-
rate, simple and reliable enough to use in brain-
computer interface. Future work will utilize the algo-
rithms developed in this study to directly control the
embedded rehabilitation robot so as to help the
patient with severed paralysis to solve the problem of
environment control and provide a new communica-
Table 2
Wavelet
Daubechies order 10
Discrete Meyer
Coiflets order 5
Rbio1.3
Recognition rate
90%
90%
89.29%
87.86%
Table 2 . Dirrerent wavelet used for extracting features.
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