Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-5-2021
Abstract
Objective. Motor-imagery (MI) classification base on electroencephalography (EEG) has been long studied in neuroscience and more recently widely used in healthcare applications such as mobile assistive robots and neurorehabilitation. In particular, EEG-based motor-imagery classification methods that rely on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have achieved relatively high classification accuracy. However, naively training CNNs to classify raw EEG data from all channels, especially for high-density EEG, is computationally demanding and requires huge training sets. It often also introduces many irrelevant input features, making it difficult for the CNN to extract the informative ones. This problem is compounded by a dearth of training data, which is particularly acute for MI tasks, because these are cognitively demanding and thus fatigue inducing. Approach. To address these issues, we proposed an end-to-end CNN-based neural network with attentional mechanism together with different data augmentation (DA) techniques. We tested it on two benchmark MI datasets, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Competition IV 2a and 2b. BCI. Main results. Our proposed neural-network architecture outperformed all state-of-the-art methods that we found in the literature, with and without DA, reaching an average classification accuracy of 93.6% and 87.83% on BCI 2a and 2b, respectively. We also directly compare decoding of MI and ME tasks. Focusing on MI classification, we find optimal channel configurations and the best DA techniques as well as investigate combining data across participants and the role of transfer learning. Significance. Our proposed approach improves the classification accuracy for MI in the benchmark datasets. In addition, collecting our own dataset enables us to compare MI and ME and investigate various aspects of EEG decoding critical for neuroscience and BCI.
Recommended Citation
Lashgari, E., et al., An end-to-end CNN with attentional mechanism applied to raw EEG in a BCI classification task. Journal of Neural Engineering, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/ac1ade
Copyright
IOP Publishing Ltd
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Included in
Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Commons, Movement and Mind-Body Therapies Commons, Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Other Rehabilitation and Therapy Commons
Comments
This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Neural Engineering in 2021following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/ac1ade
The Creative Commons license below applies only to this version of the article.