A comparison study of two P300 speller paradigms for brain–computer interface

Abstract

In this paper, a comparison of two existing P300 spellers is conducted. In the first speller, the visual stimuli of characters are presented in a single character (SC) paradigm and each button corresponding to a character flashes individually in a random order. The second speller is based on a region-based (RB) paradigm. In the first level, all characters are grouped and each button corresponding to a group flashes individually in a random order. Once a group is selected, the characters in it will appear on the flashing buttons of the second level for the selection of desired character. In a spelling experiment involving 12 subjects, higher online accuracy was obtained on the RB paradigm-based P300 speller than the SC paradigm-based P300 speller. Furthermore, we analyzed P300 detection performance, the P300 waveforms and Fisher ratios using the data collected by the two spellers. It was found that the stimuli display paradigm of the RB speller enhances P300 potential and is more suitable for P300 detection.