Whale optimization algorithm fused with SVM to detect stress in EEG signals

Abstract

Identifying stress and its level has always been a challenging area for researchers. A lot of work is going on around the world on the same. An attempt has been made by the authors in this paper as they present a methodology for detecting stress in EEG signals. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is commonly used to acquire brain signal activity. Though there exist other techniques to extract the same like Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET) we have used EEG as it is economical. We have used an open-source dataset for EEG data. Various images are used as the target stressor for collecting EEG signals. After feature selection and extraction, a support vector machine (SVM) with a whale optimization algorithm (WOA) in its kernel function for classification is used. WOA is a bio-inspired meta-heuristic algorithm, based on the hunting behavior of humpback whales. Using this method, we had obtained 91% accuracy for detecting the stress. The paper also compared the previous work done in detecting stress with the work proposed in this paper.