ETucker: a constrained tensor decomposition for single trial ERP extraction

Abstract

Abstract Objective. In this paper, we propose a new tensor decomposition to extract event-related potentials (ERP) by adding a physiologically meaningful constraint to the Tucker decomposition. Approach. We analyze the performance of the proposed model and compare it with Tucker decomposition by synthesizing a dataset. The simulated dataset is generated using a 12th-order autoregressive model in combination with independent component analysis (ICA) on real no-task electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings. The dataset is manipulated to contain the P300 ERP component and to cover different SNR conditions, ranging from 0 to −30 dB, to simulate the presence of the P300 component in extremely noisy recordings. Furthermore, in order to assess the practicality of the proposed methodology in real-world scenarios, we utilized the brain-computer interface (BCI) competition III-dataset II. Main results. Our primary results demonstrate the superior performance of our approach compared to conventional methods commonly employed for single-trial estimation. Additionally, our method outperformed both Tucker decomposition and non-negative Tucker decomposition in the synthesized dataset. Furthermore, the results obtained from real-world data exhibited meaningful performance and provided insightful interpretations for the extracted P300 component. Significance. The findings suggest that the proposed decomposition is eminently capable of extracting the target P300 component’s waveform, including latency and amplitude as well as its spatial location, using single-trial EEG recordings.