Comparing ANN, LDA, QDA, KNN and SVM algorithms in classifying relaxed and stressful mental state from two-channel prefrontal EEG data

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the feasibility of classifying relaxed and stressful mental states based on two-channel prefrontal EEG signal from 35 healthy human subjects. Specific objective of this paper is to explore the best choice of features and compare the performance of various feature classification algorithms suitable for this purpose. Here, we included different bivariate features in time domain and frequency domain and compared the classification performance of artificial neural network, linear discriminant analysis, quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), K nearest neighbour and support vector machine algorithms. Common spatial patterns (CSP) algorithm was used successfully for feature reduction. Best classification performance (99.69%) was observed with the QDA classifier taking cross-correlation estimate as feature. We also explored the effect of combining different kinds of features, effect of varying the number of features on classifier performance, robustness of the chosen methods against in inter-individual variability and the feasibility of developing subject-independent classifiers.