Enhancing performance of SSVEP-based BCI by unsupervised learning information from test trials.

Abstract

Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEPs) have become one of the most used neural signals for brain- computer interfaces (BCIs) due to their stability and high signal- to-noise rate. However, the performance of SSVEP-based BCIs would degrade with a few training samples. This study was proposed to enhance the detection of SSVEP by combining the supervised learning information from training samples and the unsupervised learning information from the trial to be tested. A new method, i.e. cyclic shift trials (CST), was proposed to generate new calibration samples from the test data, which were furtherly used to create the templates and spatial filters of task- related component analysis (TRCA). The test-trial templates and spatial filters were combined with training-sample templates and spatial filters to recognize SSVEP. The proposed algorithm was tested on a benchmark dataset. As a result, it reached significantly higher classification accuracy than traditional TRCA when only two training samples were used. Speciflcally, the accuracy was improved by 9.5% for 0.7s data. Therefore, this study demonstrates CST is effective to improve the performance of SSVEP-BCI.