An automatic electroencephalography blinking artefact detection and removal method based on template matching and ensemble empirical mode decomposition

Electrooculographic (EOG) artefacts are one of the most common causes of Electroencephalogram (EEG) distortion. In this paper, we propose a method for EOG Blinking Artefacts (BAs) detection and removal from EEG. Normalized Correlation Coefficient (NCC), based on a predetermined BA template library was used for detecting the BA. Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) was applied to the contaminated region and a statistical algorithm determined which Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) correspond to the BA. The proposed method was applied in simulated EEG signals, which were contaminated with artificially created EOG BAs, increasing the Signal-to-Error Ratio (SER) of the EEG Contaminated Region (CR) by 35dB on average.