An improved empirical mode decomposition method with ensemble classifiers for analysis of multichannel EEG in BCI emotion recognition

Abstract

Emotion recognition using EEG is a difficult study because the signals’ unstable behavior, which is brought on by the brain’s complex neuronal activity, makes it difficult to extract the underlying patterns inside it. Therefore, to analyse the signal more efficiently, in this article, a hybrid model based on IEMD-KW-Ens (Improved Empirical Mode Decomposition-Kruskal Wallis-Ensemble classifiers) technique is used. Here IEMD based technique is proposed to interpret EEG signals by adding an improved sifting stopping criterion with median filter to get the optimal decomposed EEG signals for further processing. A mixture of time, frequency and non-linear distinct features are extracted for constructing the feature vector. Afterward, we conducted feature selection using KW test to remove the insignificant ones from the feature set. Later the classification of emotions in three-dimensional model is performed in two categories i.e. machine learning based RUSBoosted trees and deep learning based convolutional neural network (CNN) for DEAP and DREAMER datasets and the outcomes are evaluated for valence, arousal, and dominance classes. The findings demonstrate that the hybrid model can successfully classify emotions in multichannel EEG signals. The decomposition approach is also instructive for improving the model’s utility in emotional computing.