A Five Command BCI System based

on The SSVEP Protocol

By

N110084
N110093
N110643
contents

Abstract
Introduction
Objective
SSVEP block diagram
Signal processing steps
Results and conclusion
Future work
References
Abstract

This project aims at the development of a five

command BCI system with a novel frequency recognition
method which relies on Steady state visual evoked potential
which is an effective electrophysiological source to implement
a BCI.
Introduction
BCI (Brain-Computer Interface):
BCI is an interfacing system that uses the electrical activity of the brain as an input
to control other devices such as a computer, wheel chair, robotic arm etc.
Signals from the brain are acquired by electrodes placed on the scalp(non-
invasive. Eg : EEG) or in the head (invasive. Eg: EcoG) and processed to extract
specific signal features that reflects the users intent. These features are translated
into commands that operate a device.
The field of BCI research and development focused primarily on applications that
aim at the diagnosis of brain diseases and at restoring damaging body parts.
In general any biological signal is generated either by Spontaneous activity of the
human body such as EEG,ECG,EMG etc or by response to some external stimulus
such as VEP(Visual Evoked Potentials),AEP(Auditory Evoked Potentials) etc.
SSVEP
When the stimulation frequency is at low rate(<4Hz), the potentials are called
transient VEPs while stimulation at higher rate(>6Hz) produce Steady State
VEPs(SSVEPs).
More specifically, if a series of identical stimuli are presented at high
frequency(Eg:12Hz), the system will stop producing transient responses and enter
into a steady state, in which the visual system resonates at the stimulus frequency. In
other words, when the human eye is excited by a visual stimulus, the brain
generates electrical activity at the same(or multiples of) frequency of the visual
stimulus.
In addition to the other brain signals(P300,sensorimotor rhythms, etc) used for BCI
approaches, SSVEP-based BCI systems have the advantage of achieving higher
accuracy and higher information transfer rate(ITR).In addition, short training and
fewer EEG channels are required.
Objective of the project
The subject will be placed in front a monitor which contains five square boxes
each flickers with different frequency(6.66,7.50,8.57,10.00 and 12.00Hz)
The subject will have to focus on any of these blocks according to our BCI
system requirement.
Every time we can observe a different signal for different frequencies.
The process will be continued for all subjects for all five frequencies. These
signals will be recorded for training purpose.
Whenever a random signal take from an unknown subject we can find the
frequency of the random signal by comparing it with the trained data by using
optimized signal processing algorithms.
By assigning commands to each of these frequency, we can control the BCI
system.
 Here outer side four blocks represent up, right,
down and left and middle block to select letter.
Likewise we can assign any task to any particular
block according to requirement.
Usually the refresh rate for an LCD Screen is 60 Hz,
creating a restriction to the number of frequencies
that can be selected.
only the frequencies that when divided with the
refresh rate of the screen result in an integer
quotient could be selected.
As a result, the frequencies that could be obtained
were the following: 30.00, 20.00, 15.00, 12.00, 10.00,
8.57, 7.50 and 6.66 Hz
SSVEP-based BCI system
Signal Processing

Feature Feature Classification

Preprocessing
Extraction Selection
Signal Acquisition
High quality EEG data were recorded using
the Emotiv Epoc headset (based on 10-20
system ) consisting of 14 wireless channels at a
sampling rate of 128Hz.
Two reference sensors are placed on the
bone just behind each ear lobe.
Each channel represent electrodes present on
the head.
The signal strength will be varied according to
the subject gender, hair type and
handedness.
Topography

The topographic representation of electrodes to

collect information from various lobes is as follows:
1)F3,F4,F7,F8 : Frontal lobe
2)O1,O2: Occipital lobe
3)T7,T8: Temporal lobe
4)P7,P8:Parietal lobe
Out of these, we used the signals observed in
electrodes P7,P8,O1,O2 for analysis since the
occipital and parietal scalp areas have been
demonstrated to contribute most to the SSVEP
frequency recognition.
2)Preprocessing
Many methods have been applied in the preprocessing part of a SSVEBCI system such
as filtering, signal amplification etc.. Majorly we concentrate on filtering.
FILTERING:
The extracted signal contains unnecessary information(noise) due to artifacts(eye
blinks, other biological signals such as ECG,EMG,), transmission line fluctuation(50Hz)
and environmental noise.
This noise cause unstable outputs and loss of information.
We can remove the noise by using the Time domain and Frequency domain filtering
techniques.
For low frequency noise removal : convert the signal to frequency domain, equate the
lower frequency components to zero and then convert the signal back to time domain.
EEG data mainly contained in 5-48Hz range. So by using bandpass filter(Eg:butterworth
filter) can remove a noise related with EMG(high frequency noise), EOG(low frequency
noise) and power line noise(50Hz).
Raw signal which contains noise preprocessed signal
Comparison b/w filtered and raw signal by frequency spectrum
Comparison b/w filtered and raw signal by power spectrum
Feature Extraction and Selection
The preprocessed signal should be compared with the recorded data to get the result.
A feature is an alternative representation of a signal. So in feature extraction step we
determine various descriptors of the signal like mean, energy, standard deviation,
correlation, Hjorth descriptors
The choice of features has an important influence on the accuracy of the classification
process.
Features are classified into two categories:
1)Non-Transformed features: Eg: power, amplitude, energy
2)Transformed features: Eg: PSD, frequency and magnitude spectra
Transformed features form the most important category for biomedical signal
processing and feature extraction.
 Continued..
System performance mainly depend on Feature extraction. System performance
varied for different signal features, so feature extraction should be unique for better
system.
A useful characteristic of SSVEP-based signals is the synchronization of the brain to the
frequency of the stimulus. To exploit this characteristic we delve into the concept of
spectral analysis(estimating how the power of a finite length signal is distributed over
frequency-PSD).
To determine the PSD of a signal, there are various algorithms such as periodogram,
welch method, Out of these the optimized solution is to determine the PSD using
Autoregressive Model .
An autoregressive process of order p is given by

Here autoregressive coefficients determined by Burgs algorithm. Then using the

AIC we determine the order p and there by determine the PSD.
Classification
Classification is a process where the unknown labels of test data/patterns are
predicted and can be divided into supervised and unsupervised. Well concentrate
on supervised classification methodologies here.
Supervised classification is again divided into two categories:
1)binary class: Eg: SVM(Support Vector Machines)..
2)multiclass: Eg: KNN, neural networks
Each of these classification technique employs a learning algorithm to identify a
model that best fits the relationship between the features and class label of the input
data.
Assigning classes to the recorded data
classifiers

A classifier is essentially a systematic approach for building

classification models from an input dataset
There are more many classifiers
Eg: K Nearest Neighbor(k-NN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Logistic
Regression(LogReg), Random Forest (RF) , ZeroR, 1R, Decision Tree (DT) ,
etc
The main problem with classifiers is accuracy. only few will give the
best accuracy.
Neural networks give best accuracy at the same time SVM provide
low accuracy
The classifiers that we worked on this project are SVM, K-NN and
neural networks
KNN
KNN refers to the K nearest neighbor.
Its the most popular for performing predictions. In this case, the mapping function is
approximated locally. Here the test instance is assigned to the class most common
among its k nearest neighbors .
More specifically, a pattern in the test data is classified by calculating the distance to all
the patterns in the training data; the class of the training pattern that gives the shortest
distance determines the class of the test pattern.

Formula for calculating distance

KNN plot
MLP
The multilayer-perceptron is one of the most
widely used neural network architecture in
classification problems.
input quantities are processed through
successive layers of neurons, where there are
three layers. An input layer normally has
neurons equal to the number of input features
while the output layer will have the neurons
equal to the number of classes in the problem.
A hidden layer can have any number of
neurons and this value is normally decided
through trial and error.
In this, we train the neural network until the
required MSE(Mean Square Error) is reached
and then we classify the random data using this
network.
Continued..
Results and conclusions
We trained the data and when we test with random signal we
achieved
1)70% accuracy using KNN algorithm. the inaccuracy is due to the boundary
problems
2)80% accuracy using MLP based neural network .

Future work
We can achieve higher accuracy by using advanced neural network
applications

Help full for several disabilities like Locked-in syndrome .

Speller Programs

Prosthetic Control, Home Automation ,Games

Doubts ?
References

A four command BCI system based on the SSVEP protocol by

L. Maggi, S. Parini, L.Piccini, Member, IEEE, G.Panfili and G.Andreoni
Omar AlZoubi1,2, Irena Koprinska1 and Rafael A. Calvo2
School of Information Technology School of Electrical and
Information Engineering, Australia
https://figshare.com/articles/MAMEM_EEG_SSVEP_Dataset_III_14_ch
annels_11_subjects_5_frequencies_presented_simultaneously_/34138
51
Analysis of EEG Signals For EEG-based Brain-Computer Interface
Jessy Parokaran Varghese School of Innovation, Design and
Technology Mlardalen University Vasteras, Sweden.