EEG-based cross-subject emotion recognition using Fourier-Bessel series expansion based empirical wavelet transform and NCA feature selection method

Abstract

Automated emotion recognition using brain electroencephalogram (EEG) signals is predominantly used for the accurate assessment of human actions as compared to facial expression or speech signals. Various signal processing methods have been used for extracting representative features from EEG signals for emotion recognition. However, the EEG signals are non-stationary and vary across the subjects as well as in different sessions of the same subject; hence it exhibits poor generalizability and low classification accuracy for an emotion classification of cross subjects. In this paper, EEG signals-based automated cross-subject emotion recognition framework is proposed using the Fourier-Bessel series expansion-based empirical wavelet transform (FBSE-EWT) method. This method is used to decompose the EEG signals from each channel into four sub-band signals. Manually ten channels are selected from the frontal lobe, from which entropy and energy features are extracted from each sub-band signal. The subject variability is reduced using an average moving filter method on each channel to obtain the smoothened feature vector of size 80. The three feature selection techniques, such as neighborhood component analysis (NCA), relief-F, and mRMR, are used to obtain an optimal feature vector. The machine learning models, such as artificial neural network (ANN), k-nearest neighborhood (k-NN) with two (fine and weighted) functions, and ensemble bagged tree classifiers are trained by the obtained feature vectors. The experiments are performed on two publicly accessible databases, named SJTU emotion EEG dataset (SEED) and dataset for emotion analysis using physiological signals (DEAP). The training and testing of the models have been performed using 10-fold cross-validation and leave-one-subject-out-cross-validation (LOSOCV). The proposed framework based on FBSE-EWT and NCA feature selection approach shows superior results for classifying human emotions compared to other state-of-art emotion classification models.