[Feature extraction of motor imagery electroencephalography based on time-frequency-space domains]

The purpose of using brain-computer interface (BCI) is to build a bridge between brain and computer for the disable persons, in order to help them to communicate with the outside world. Electroencephalography (EEG) has low signal to noise ratio (SNR), and there exist some problems in the traditional methods for the feature extraction of EEG, such as low classification accuracy, lack of spatial information and huge amounts of features. To solve these problems, we proposed a new method based on time domain, frequency domain and space domain. In this study, independent component analysis (ICA) and wavelet transform were used to extract the temporal, spectral and spatial features from the original EEG signals, and then the extracted features were classified with the method combined support vector machine (SVM) with genetic algorithm (GA). The proposed method displayed a better classification performance, and made the mean accuracy of the Graz datasets in the BCI Competitions of 2003 reach 96%. The classification results showed that the proposed method with the three domains could effectively overcome the drawbacks of the traditional methods based solely on time-frequency domain when the EEG signals were used to describe the characteristics of the brain electrical signals.