An Algebraic Method for Eye Blink Artifacts Detection in Single Channel EEG Recordings

Single channel EEG systems are very useful in EEG based applications where real time processing, low computational complexity and low cumbersomeness are critical constrains. These include brain-computer interface and biofeedback devices and also some clinical applications such as EEG recording on babies or Alzheimer’s disease recognition. In this paper we address the problem of eye blink artifacts detection in such systems. We study an algebraic approach based on numerical differentiation, which is recently introduced from operational calculus. The occurrence of an artifact is modeled as an irregularity which appears explicitly in the time (generalized) derivative of the EEG signal as a delay. Manipulating such delay is easy with the operational calculus and it leads to a simple joint detection and localization algorithm. While the algorithm is devised based on continuous-time arguments, the final implementation step is fully realized in a discrete-time context, using very classical discrete-time FIR filters. The proposed approach is compared with three other approaches: (1) the very basic threshold approach, (2) the approach that combines the use of median filter, matched filter and nonlinear energy operator (NEO) and (3) the wavelet based approach. Comparison is done on: (a) the artificially created signal where the eye activity is synthesized from real EEG recordings and (b) the real single channel EEG recordings from 32 different brain locations. Results are presented with Receiver Operating Characteristics curves. The results show that the proposed approach compares to the other approaches better or as good as, while having lower computational complexity with simple real time implementation. Comparison of the results on artificially created and real signal leads to conclusions that with detection techniques based on derivative estimation we are able to detect not only eye blink artifacts, but also any spike shaped artifact, even if it is very low in amplitude.

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