ERP prototypical matching net: a meta-learning method for zero-calibration RSVP-based image retrieval

Objective.A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) is an efficient information detection technology through detecting event-related potentials (ERPs) evoked by target visual stimuli. The BCI system requires a time-consuming calibration process to build a reliable decoding model for a new user. Therefore, zero-calibration has become an important topic in BCI research.Approach.In this paper, we construct an RSVP dataset that includes 31 subjects, and propose a zero-calibration method based on a metric-based meta-learning: ERP prototypical matching net (EPMN). EPMN learns a metric space where the distance between electroencephalography (EEG) features and ERP prototypes belonging to the same category is smaller than that of different categories. Here, we employ prototype learning to learn a common representation from ERP templates of different subjects as ERP prototypes. Additionally, a metric-learning loss function is proposed for maximizing the distance between different classes of EEG and ERP prototypes and minimizing the distance between the same classes of EEG and ERP prototypes in the metric space.Main results.The experimental results showed that EPMN achieved a balanced-accuracy of 86.34% and outperformed the comparable methods.Significance.Our EPMN can realize zero-calibration for an RSVP-based BCI system.