Equivalent dipole source imaging of brain electric activity by means of parametric projection filter

In the present study, spatial filters for inverse estimation of an equivalent dipole layer from the scalp-recorded potentials have been explored for their suitability in achieving high-resolution electroencephalogram (EEG) imaging. The performance of the parametric projection filter (PPF), which we propose to use for high-resolution EEG imaging, has been evaluated by computer simulations in the presence of a priori information on noise. An inhomogeneous three-concentric-sphere head model was used in the present simulation study to represent the head volume conductor. An equivalent dipole layer was used to model brain electric sources and estimated from the scalp potentials. Various noise conditions were simulated and the parametric projection filter was compared with standard regularization procedures such as the truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD) and the Tikhonov regularization (TKNV). The present simulation results suggest that the proposed method performs better than that of commonly used inverse regularization techniques, such as the general inverse using the TSVD and the TKNV, when the correlation between the original source distribution and the noise distribution is low, and performs similarly when the correlation is high. A method for determining the optimum regularization parameter, which can be applied to parametric inverse techniques, has also been developed.