On the use of LDA performance as a metric of feature extraction methods for a P300 BCI classification task

Abstract

Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) translate brain activity into computer commands. To enhance the performance of a BCI, it is necessary to improve the feature extraction techniques being applied to decode the users' intentions. Objective comparison methods are needed to analyze different feature extraction techniques. One possibility is to use the classifier performance as a comparative measure. In this work the effect of several variables that affect the behaviour of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) has been studied when used to distinguish between electroencephalographic signals with and without the presence of event related potentials (ERPs). The error rate (ER) and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were used as performance estimators of LDA. The results show that the number of characteristics, the degree of balance of the training patterns set and the number of averaged trials affect the classifier's performance and therefore, must be considered in the design of the integrated system.