Nonlinear and nonstationary framework for feature extraction and classification of motor imagery

In this work we investigate a nonlinear approach for feature extraction of Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals in order to classify motor imagery for Brain Computer Interface (BCI). This approach is based on the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and band power (BP). The EMD method is a data-driven technique to analyze non-stationary and nonlinear signals. It generates a set of stationary time series called Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMF) to represent the original data. These IMFs are analyzed with the power spectral density (PSD) to study the active frequency range correspond to the motor imagery for each subject. Then, the band power is computed within a certain frequency range in the channels. Finally, the data is reconstructed with only the specific IMFs and then the band power is employed on the new database. The classification of motor imagery was performed by using two classifiers, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The results obtained show that the EMD method allows the most reliable features to be extracted from EEG and that the classification rate obtained is higher and better than using only the direct BP approach.