Sequential Probability Ratio Testing with Power Projective Base Method Improves Decision-Making for BCI.

Journal: Computational and mathematical methods in medicine
Published Date:

Abstract

Obtaining a fast and reliable decision is an important issue in brain-computer interfaces (BCI), particularly in practical real-time applications such as wheelchair or neuroprosthetic control. In this study, the EEG signals were firstly analyzed with a power projective base method. Then we were applied a decision-making model, the sequential probability ratio testing (SPRT), for single-trial classification of motor imagery movement events. The unique strength of this proposed classification method lies in its accumulative process, which increases the discriminative power as more and more evidence is observed over time. The properties of the method were illustrated on thirteen subjects' recordings from three datasets. Results showed that our proposed power projective method outperformed two benchmark methods for every subject. Moreover, with sequential classifier, the accuracies across subjects were significantly higher than that with nonsequential ones. The average maximum accuracy of the SPRT method was 84.1%, as compared with 82.3% accuracy for the sequential Bayesian (SB) method. The proposed SPRT method provides an explicit relationship between stopping time, thresholds, and error, which is important for balancing the time-accuracy trade-off. These results suggest SPRT would be useful in speeding up decision-making while trading off errors in BCI.

Authors

  • Rong Liu
    School of Biomedical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China.
  • Yongxuan Wang
    Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian, Liaoning 116001, China.
  • Xinyu Wu
    Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China.
  • Jun Cheng
    School of Electrical and Information Technology, Yunnan Minzu University, Kunming, Yunnan 650500, PR China. Electronic address: jcheng6819@126.com.