Improving Auditory Steady-State Response Detection Using Independent Component Analysis on Multichannel EEG Data

Over the last decade, the detection of auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) has been developed for reliable hearing threshold estimation at audiometric frequencies. Unfortunately, the duration of ASSR measurement can be long, which is unpractical for wide scale clinical application. In this paper, we propose independent component analysis (ICA) as a tool to improve the ASSR detection in recorded single-channel as well as multichannel electroencephalogram (EEG) data. We conclude that ICA is able to reduce measurement duration significantly. For a multichannel implementation, near-optimal performance is obtained with five-channel recordings.