A Maximum Likelihood Perspective of Spatial Filter Design in SSVEP-Based BCIs

Abstract

In steady-state visual-evoked potential (SSVEP) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), existing detection algorithms utilizing spatial filters like task-related component analysis (TRCA) derive the spatial filters mainly through maximizing the inter-trial similarity between the combined signals over the training set. Although they achieve by far the best classification performance in SSVEP-based BCIs, some important problems are still unresolved. Especially, the mechanism of how spatial filters cancel the background noise in brain signals and optimize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of SSVEPs is still not figured out. Therefore, to solve these problems, in this paper a new perspective of spatial filter design is proposed. Specifically, a linear generative signal model of SSVEP is adopted and the spatial filters are obtained automatically through maximum likelihood estimation of source signals and channel vectors. In the same time, the relation between maximum likelihood estimation and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) maximization is discussed. Through a step-by-step formulation, this paper provides a theoretical justification for those conventional algorithms utilizing spatial filters. As for the classification performance, the proposed scheme is tested on a benchmark dataset of 35 subjects. Experiment results show that the classification performance of the proposed scheme is competitive against three benchmark algorithms, which include TRCA. Especially, the proposed scheme achieves a fair performance improvement over the benchmark methods in the cases where a shorter time window, or a larger number of electrodes, or a smaller number of training blocks are adopted.