Light-weight single trial EEG signal processing algorithms: Computational profiling for low power design

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) systems translate brain rhythms into signals comprehensible by computers. BCI has numerous applications in the clinical domain, the computer gaming, and the military. Real-time analysis of single trial brain signals is a challenging task, due to the low SNR of the incoming signals, added noise due to muscle artifacts, and trial-to-trial variability. In this work we present a computationally lightweight classification method based on several time and frequency domain features. After preprocessing and filtering, wavelet transform and Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) are used for feature extraction. Feature vectors which are extracted from θ and α frequency bands are classified using a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. EEG data were recorded from 64 electrodes during three different Go/NoGo tasks. We achieved 91% classification accuracy for two-class discrimination. The high recognition rate and low computational complexity makes this approach a promising method for a BCI system running on wearable and mobile devices. Computational profiling shows that this method is suitable for real time signal processing implementation.