Dual-channel TRCA-net based on cross-subject positive transfer for SSVEP-BCI

Objective. To enhance the decoding accuracy and information transfer rate of steady-state visual evoked potential-based brain-computer interface (SSVEP-BCI) systems and to reduce inter-subject variability for broader SSVEP-BCI applications, a dual-channel TRCA-net (DC-TRCA-net) method is proposed, based on cross-subject positive transfer. The proposed method incorporates an innovative Transfer-Accuracy-based Subject Selection (T-ASS) strategy and a deep learning network integrated with the SSVEP Domain Adaptation Network (SSVEP-DAN) to enhance SSVEP-BCI decoding performance. The T-ASS strategy constructs contribution scores by computing each subject's self-accuracy and transfer accuracy, and enables effective source subject selection while mitigating negative transfer risks. DC-TRCA-net is further developed to improve model generalization through cross-subject data augmentation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated on two large-scale public benchmark datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that DC-TRCA-net outperforms existing networks across both datasets, with particularly substantial performance gains observed in complex experimental scenarios.