ASTERI: Image-based representation of EEG signals for motor imagery classification

Abstract

Purpose Electroencephalography (EEG) signals are valuable in the monitoring and investigation of neurological diseases and in the control of brain-machine interfaces (BCI). However, these signals are noisy and are non-linear and non-stationary in nature. Signal analysis is an expensive task and can lead to misdiagnosis. Deep learning can be used to overcome these challenges. The most used deep architectures are based on convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Representing EEG signals as images can be useful to use deep architectures based on CNNs in solutions based on intelligent EEG-based systems. Methods In this work, we propose the ASTERI method, for representing EEG signals in two dimensions using the backprojection reconstruction method. To validate the proposal, experiments were performed with motor imagery EEG signals from the BCI Competition IV 2b motor imagery database. To extract attributes from the EEG signal windows, we used the ASTERI representation and investigated the pre-trained networks VGG16 and LeNet. To classify the final classification of imagined movements to the right and to the left, we used Random Forests. Results For the original database, the validation with 100 trees achieved an average accuracy and kappa index of 88.97% and 0.78, respectively. In the case of augmented databases with synthetic instances, the average accuracies were 89.10% and 89.13% for increases of 50% and 150% for each class, respectively. Conclusion The experimental results showed that the ASTERI method, together with hybrid deep architectures based on CNN and Random Forests, can generate competitive results in solving motor imagery problems. The representation of signals as images can also con tribute to the exploration of new solutions of applied neuroscience problems based on deep architectures.