2016 International Conference on Micro-Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Cepstrum Based Algorithm for Motor Imagery
Classification
Sumanta Bhattacharyya 1,2
PhD Student, Department of ECE,
1
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra Ranchi, India
2
Cambridge Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India
sumanta.bh@gmail.com
Abstract A linear convolutive mixing model based real time
motor imagery classification algorithm is proposed in this
paper. The proposed cepstrum based method is very first and
robust unsupervised learning algorithm, extremely useful for
real time brain computer interface(BCI). The cepstrum is
analyzed for estimation of combined action potential generated
through the active synapses of raw electroencephalogram
(EEG) signal. Maximum energy of the estimated cepstrum, is
used as a feature . The extracted feature further subjected to
simple Bayesian probabilistic classifier, for classification. The
proposed method of EEG signal pre-processing and feature
extraction outperforms the conventional temporal relative
spectral power (TRSP) based movement imagery classification
algorithm and BCI competition II results.
Keywords Action Potential, Brain Computer Interface (BCI),
Cepstrum, Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Movement Imagery,
Temporal Relative Spectral Power (TRSP).
I. INTRODUCTION
BCI is a sister technology of the Human Computer
Interaction. Primary objectives of the BCI systems are to
provide adequate assistive systems for the paralytic disable
persons, providing neuronal rehabilitation for accidental
patients, providing brain reading, remote communication, brain
control gamming system and providing many supportive system
for human society[1]-[3]. BCI system controls specific external
machines, to do an intended action based on the decision,
provided by analyzing brain signals[4]. The BCI systems, based
on EEG signals is non invasive in nature, which have wide
scope of research.
Primarily BCI systems consist of Data Acquisition, Signal
Processing and Controlling External Machines for intended
action. Among this the Signal Processing section consists
Preprocessing, Feature Extraction, Feature Selection and Feature
Classification. An accurate decision concluded through the BCI
system, primarily depends on the various signal processing and
classification methods used in the preprocessing, feature
978-1-5090-3411-6/16 $31.00 2016 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICMETE.2016.140
Manoj Kumar Mukul
Assistant Professor, Department of ECE,
Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra Ranchi, India
mkm@bitmesra.ac.in
extraction, feature selection and feature classification methods.
In [5] Ali Bashashati, et. al. described about the review of EEG
signal processing. Data acquisition technique of the EEG signal
is very sophisticated process, which explained in [6] Leigh R.
et. al. and [7]R. Vigario et. al.. The recorded EEG signals
contaminated with a variety of physiological artifacts like eye
movement, eye blinking etc. The electro-oculogram (EOG)
signal is the most dominant artifacts present in the EEG signal
explained in [8] A. Schlogl et. al. and [9] A. Srinivasulu et.al..
Pre processed EEG signal is further subjected to the feature
extraction process, to identify unique feature present in the
signal. There are various well established feature extraction
algorithm like ICA/ BSS discussed in [10] M. K. Mukul et.al.,
hjorth parameter explained in [11] B. Hjorth, Power Spectrum
Density and other feature extraction algorithm explained in
[12]-[23]. Among the other feature extraction algorithms TRSP
[24] M. K. Mukul et.al., publicized a considerable performance
in movement imagery classification. The proposed cepstrum
based algorithm outperforms, TRSP based algorithm and BCI
competition II results in different BCI evolution parameter like
kappa coefficient, classification accuracy, mutual information,
time complexity etc.
For two class problems, the maximum value of mutual
information should be unity and the classification accuracy
should 100%. To reach the maximum value of classification
accuracy and the mutual information under unsupervised
environment, is an open problem for the BCI researchers.
EEG signals are low amplitude, low frequency biomedical
signals. On the basis of frequency bands EEG signals are
classified as : Delta band (1-4 Hz), Theta band (4-8 Hz), Alpha
band (8-12 Hz), Beta band (13-25 Hz), Gamma band (25-40 Hz)
[25]. The nerve cells present in the primary sensory motor cortex
region, got excited due to motor imagery activities. The
electrodes placed in this area are C3, Cz and C4. Primarily
Alpha and Beta rhythms are affected by movement imagery
related activity like the hand movements, foot movements,
tongue movement etc.
The EEG signals are non-stationary signals. The EEG signals
of duration 5ms to 100ms are considered as quasi stationary
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signal [26]. The EEG signal reects the sequence of the brain
activities. Based on this quasi-stationary behavior and linear
convolutive mixing model displayed in the Fig. 1, a cepstrum
based algorithm has been proposed to analysis the recorded EEG
signals [27]-[29].
Fig. 1. Human Brain model
The action potentials of the excited neurons are recorded
through the electrode placed over the scalp[25] has displayed in
the Fig. 1. Under the assumptions that the human brain is a
linear convolutive mixing model, the recorded EEG signal has
been passed through the inverse filtering approach to estimate
the synchronized action potential for movement imagery
classification [27]-[29]. The most important method to perform
inverse filtering is the cepstrum estimation [26]. This inverse
filtering also called homomorphic filtering [28][29]. The
estimated cepstrum are further subjected to energy estimation to
estimate the unique features hidden in the EEG signal for
movement imagery classification. Estimation of the cepstrum
from the FIR band pass filtered EEG has been used as a
preprocessing method. The energy estimation of the cepstrum
has been used as feature extraction method [23]. The outcomes
of the feature extraction are taken as final feature matrix. To
analyze the performance of the feature extraction process, the
extracted features are classified by the simple Bayesian classifier
[30-32]. The detection of movement related thought pattern in
the human brain is done through the movement imagery
classification methods and the final stage of the brain pattern
identification is to control an external machine by the thought of
the user [1-4]. This paper is ordered into five part. Section II
describes the experimental paradigm of BCI competition
datasets [33-38]. Section III describes the proposed
methodology, and Section IV describes the result and
discussions followed by the conclusion and future work.
II. EXPERIMENTAL PARADIGM
A. Dataset I: Motor Imagery Data of Left and Right Hand
Movement.
The dataset III of the BCI competition II [33]-[35] was used
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for study in this paper. The EEG dataset has provided by the
Department of Medical Informatics, Institute for Biomedical
Engineering, University of Technology Graz. Data comprises
right hand and left hand of MI tasks recorded from one healthy
subject from 3 electrodes. The EEG Dataset comprises 280 trials
including training and testing data. The cue was presented from
three second to nine second. At the same time, the feedback was
presented to the subject. Within this period, it should be possible
to distinguish the two types of trials. The sampling frequency of
the data set was 128Hz.
The data set contains 3 EEG channels, 140 trials with 9
seconds each. The timing scheme of the paradigm is depicted in
Fig. 2 [33].
Fig. 2. Timing scheme of the BCI competition II, dataset III[33]
B. Dataset II: Motor Imagery Data of Right Hand and Left
Hand
The BCI competition IV Graz dataset 2b was used for this
analysis [36-38]. The EEG dataset has provided by the Institute
for Knowledge Discovery. BCI competition IV dataset
containing EEG data recorded from 9 subjects B01, B02,
B03, B04, B05, B06, B07, B08 and B09. All
subjects were sitting in an armchair, watching a screen monitor
placed approximately 1 m away at eye level. Three bipolar EEG
channels (C3, Cz and C4) were recorded with a sampling
frequency of 250 Hz and the signals band pass filtered between
0.5 Hz and 100 Hz, and a notch filter at 50 Hz was enabled. In
addition the electrooculogram (EOG) was recorded with three
unipolar electrodes. Each subject contributing a single session
referred to as *03T for the training and *04E for the evaluation
analysis. The dataset consists of two classes, namely MI of the
left hand [class 1] and right hand [class 2]. For the experimental
purpose only two channels C3 and C4 are utilized (Cz as
reference electrode). The beginning of each trial started at 0 s
with a gray smiley centered on the screen. At the 2nd second, a
short warning beep (1 kHz, 70 ms) was given. The cue was
presented from 3 second to 7.5 second is depicted in Fig. 3. The
subjects required to move the smiley towards the left or right
side by the imagining left or right hand movements respectively.
At the 7.5 second, the screen went blank and a random interval
between 1.0 and 2.0 second was provided for the relaxation.
Dataset and the more details description of the EEG signal
recording methodology can be found in [36].

Fig. 3. Timing scheme of the BCI competition IV, dataset IIb[36]
III. PROPOSED METHOD
The Proposed method of EEG signal preprocessing is shown
in Fig. 4. The recorded EEG signals (displays in block I) may
contaminated with various kinds of physiological artifacts like
eye blinking, eye movement etc. The EOG signal is the most
dominant artifacts present in the recorded EEG signal [8-9].
The regression coefficient based method of EOG correction
has been applied to remove artifacts (displays in block II) [8-9].
The EOG corrected EEG signal was processed to FIR band pass
filter to extract motor band signal from the EOG corrected EEG
signal (displays in block III).
The filtered signal is subjected to real cepstrum estimation
method (displays in block IV). The real cepstrums were further
subjected to energy estimation (displays in block V), the energy
of the real cepstrums are taken as feature matrix, which are
further subjected to Bayesian classifier (displays in block VI).
EOG Correction by
[ ECi ]r X Ci (n) (1)
Regression
The raw EEG signal is represented as ECi ( n ) where
C [C3, C4] and i [left, right].
Fig. 4. Proposed Methodology
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A. Pre-processing
Band Pass Filter
It is wellknown to all that the EEG signals contain maximum
information in the small frequency bands. These frequency
bands are basically retrieved from the raw EEG signals. In order
to retrieve the frequency band information, digital filters, either
finite response filter (FIR) or infinite response filter (IIR) are
frequently used. The frequency band information's are also
known as rhythmic information. Here band pass FIR filter was
used for filtering the alpha and beta band signal i.e. 8-30 Hz
frequency band. The FIR band pass filtered EEG signal YCi (n)
can be expressed as
YCi ( n) = h ( n) * ECi ( n ) (2)
where h( n) is the impulse response of order five hundred
and ECi ( n) is the raw EEG signal.
Cepstrum
The concept of cepstrum basically used to calculate the
original excitation function in speech production system. It is
very interesting concept to perform the inverse filtering from the
recorded speech signal. Motivated by the cepstrum analysis of
speech signal, the authors think to apply similar analysis to get
the synchronized active potential from each channel to retrieve
the movement imagery information. The recorded EEG Signal
has been processed to real cepstrum RCi estimation. Fig.5
depicts the way to calculate the cepstrum from filtered EEG
signal.
The EOG Corrected EEG signal ECi (n) here C [C3, C4], i
[left, right], h(n) is the impulse response of the Band Pass
filter. YCi is the Real Cepstrum of Filtered EEG Signal [29].
Fig. 5. Cepstrum estimation method
RCi = Real[ IDFT {log DFT (YCi ) }] , (3)
where RCi is the real Cepstrum.
B. Feature Extraction Table 1. Performance analysis of the proposed algorithm in terms of
Error, SNR, MI and Classification time for data set 1
Energy estimation
Name of the Methods Min Max Max MI Classification
Estimation of the Energy of Real Cepstrum of the EEG Error SNR [bit] Time T [s]
signal depending on the C3 and C4 channel. [%]
BCI Competition II 10.71 1.34 0.61 7.59
EnCi = max {RCi }
2
results of Group C
, (4) TRSP Method 9.63 1.87 0.7610 7.39
Proposed Method 9.29 1.94 0.7798 6.70
The Maximum Energy of Real Cepstrum has been taken as
feature matrix and it was further subjected to Bayesian Classifier The maximum SNR of the proposed method is 0.6077
for classification. greater than the BCI competition II result and 0.07 greater than
the TRSP method. The maximum mutual information of the
C. Classification proposed method is 0.1698 bits greater than the BCI competition
Bayesian classiers are the statistical classiers, based on the II result and 0.0188 bits greater than the TRSP method. The
Bayes' theorem. The Bayesian classifiers are highly scalable classification time of the of the proposed method is 0.89 second
classifier that requires a number of features to solve a learning less than the competition II result and 0.69 second less than the
problem[15]-[18]. They can predict class membership TRSP method.
probabilities, such as the probability that a given task belongs to The performance of the proposed method for testing data of
a particular class. Bayesian classiers have also exhibited high the dataset 1 has been compared with the performance of the
accuracy and speed when applied to large databases. TRSP method is shown in Fig. 6.

The core formulation of Bayesian Classifier is

n
P (X | Ci ) = P (x k | Ci ) = P (x1 | Ci ) P (x 2 | Ci ) ... P(x n | Ci )
k =1

A Continuous Valued attribute is typically assumed to have a

Gaussian distribution with men and standard deviation , is
dened by
(x )2
1
g (x, , ) = e 2 2

2
where
P (x k | Ci ) = g(x k , Ci , Ci )

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Fig. 6. Mutual Information plot of proposed method and TRSP for testing data
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, of Dataset I
authors consider the BCI competition II dataset III and BCI
competition IV Graz dataset 2b. It is an well known fact that the The performance of the proposed method for testing data of
EEG Signal contains information in rhythms. For movement the dataset 2 has been compared with the result of TRSP shown
imagery classification alpha and beta rhythm is very useful. This in the table 2. Classification accuracy of the proposed method
paper considers the same frequency rhythm for movement 2.17 percent more accurate than TRSP method for training data
imagery classification. The maximum information has been and 16.45 percent more accurate than testing data.
found in some specific frequency band for each subject. This
specific frequency bands are named as the reactive frequency Table 2. Performance analysis of the proposed algorithm in
band. The proposed algorithm has been applied in the reactive terms of Classification Accuracy for data set2
frequency bands of individual subjects.
Subject Training (03T) Evaluation (04E)
The performance of the proposed method for testing data of TRSP Proposed TRSP Proposed
the dataset 1 has been compared with the result of TRSP and Method Method
BCI competition II results [39] is shown in the table 1. The
minimum error of the proposed method is 1.42 percent lesser B01 84.38 98.12 58.49 88.13
than the BCI competition II result of the group C and 0.34 B02 100 100 59.83 81.88
percent lesser than the TRSP method. B03 98.12 98.75 54.43 93.13

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Classification. American Journal of Biomedical Engineering. 2013; 3(6): 208-
Authors would like to acknowledge here BIT Mesra and CIT 219.
Ranchi for the constant support and providing such a good [17] Manoj Kumar Mukul and Fumitoshi Matsuno, Movement imagery
environment for research. classification based on subband BSS, System Integration (SII), IEEE/SICE
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