EEG channel and feature investigation in binary and multiple motor imagery task predictions

Introduction: Motor Imagery (MI) Electroencephalography (EEG) signals are non-stationary and dynamic physiological signals which have low signal-to-noise ratio. Hence, it is difficult to achieve high classification accuracy. Although various machine learning methods have already proven useful to that effect, the use of many features and ineffective EEG channels often leads to a complex structure of classifier algorithms. State-of-the-art studies were interested in improving classification performance with complex feature extraction and classification methods by neglecting detailed EEG channel and feature investigation in predicting MI tasks from EEGs. Here, we investigate the effects of the statistically significant feature selection method on four different feature domains (time-domain, frequency-domain, time-frequency domain, and non-linear domain) and their two different combinations to reduce the number of features and classify MI-EEG features by comparing low-dimensional matrices with well-known machine learning algorithms. Methods: Our main goal is not to find the best classifier performance but to perform feature and channel investigation in MI task classification. Therefore, the detailed investigation of the effect of EEG channels and features is implemented using a statistically significant feature distribution on 22 EEG channels for each feature set separately. We used the BCI Competition IV Dataset IIa and 288 samples per person. A total of 1,364 MI-EEG features were analyzed in this study. We tested nine distinct classifiers: Decision tree, Discriminant analysis, Logistic regression, Naive Bayes, Support vector machine, k-Nearest neighbor, Ensemble learning, Neural networks, and Kernel approximation. Results: Among all feature sets considered, classifications performed with non-linear and combined feature sets resulted in a maximum accuracy of 63.04% and 47.36% for binary and multiple MI task predictions, respectively. The ensemble learning classifier achieved the maximum accuracy in almost all feature sets for binary and multiple MI task classifications. Discussion: Our research thus shows that the statistically significant feature-based feature selection method significantly improves the classification performance with fewer features in almost all feature sets, enabling detailed and effective EEG channel and feature investigation.