Byeong-Hoo Lee

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Jeong-Hyun Cho, Byoung-Hee Kwon et al.

Recently, advanced technologies have unlimited potential in solving various problems with a large amount of data. However, these technologies have yet to show competitive performance in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) which deal with brain signals. Basically, brain signals are difficult to collect in large quantities, in particular, the amount of information would be sparse in spontaneous BCIs. In addition, we conjecture that high spatial and temporal similarities between tasks increase the prediction difficulty. We define this problem as sparse condition. To solve this, a factorization approach is introduced to allow the model to obtain distinct representations from latent space. To this end, we propose two feature extractors: A class-common module is trained through adversarial learning acting as a generator; Class-specific module utilizes loss function generated from classification so that features are extracted with traditional methods. To minimize the latent space shared by the class-common and class-specific features, the model is trained under orthogonal constraint. As a result, EEG signals are factorized into two separate latent spaces. Evaluations were conducted on a single-arm motor imagery dataset. From the results, we demonstrated that factorizing the EEG signal allows the model to extract rich and decisive features under sparse condition.

Kang Yin, Byeong-Hoo Lee, Byoung-Hee Kwon et al.

Data augmentation approaches are widely explored for the enhancement of decoding electroencephalogram signals. In subject-independent brain-computer interface system, domain adaption and generalization are utilized to shift source subjects' data distribution to match the target subject as an augmentation. However, previous works either introduce noises (e.g., by noise addition or generation with random noises) or modify target data, thus, cannot well depict the target data distribution and hinder further analysis. In this paper, we propose a target-centered subject transfer framework as a data augmentation approach. A subset of source data is first constructed to maximize the source-target relevance. Then, the generative model is applied to transfer the data to target domain. The proposed framework enriches the explainability of target domain by adding extra real data, instead of noises. It shows superior performance compared with other data augmentation methods. Extensive experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness and robustness of our approach as a prosperous tool for further research.

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Jeong-Hyun Cho, Byung-Hee Kwon

Brain-computer interface (BCI) uses brain signals to communicate with external devices without actual control. Particularly, BCI is one of the interfaces for controlling the robotic arm. In this study, we propose a knowledge distillation-based framework to manipulate robotic arm through hybrid paradigm induced EEG signals for practical use. The teacher model is designed to decode input data hierarchically and transfer knowledge to student model. To this end, soft labels and distillation loss functions are applied to the student model training. According to experimental results, student model achieved the best performance among the singular architecture-based methods. It is confirmed that using hierarchical models and knowledge distillation, the performance of a simple architecture can be improved. Since it is uncertain what knowledge is transferred, it is important to clarify this part in future studies.

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Byoung-Hee Kwon, Seong-Whan Lee

Deep learning has shown promise in decoding brain signals, such as electroencephalogram (EEG), in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). However, the non-stationary characteristics of EEG signals pose challenges for training neural networks to acquire appropriate knowledge. Inconsistent EEG signals resulting from these non-stationary characteristics can lead to poor performance. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate and address sample inconsistency to ensure robust performance in spontaneous BCIs. In this study, we introduce the concept of sample dominance as a measure of EEG signal inconsistency and propose a method to modulate its effect on network training. We present a two-stage dominance score estimation technique that compensates for performance degradation caused by sample inconsistencies. Our proposed method utilizes non-parametric estimation to infer sample inconsistency and assigns each sample a dominance score. This score is then aggregated with the loss function during training to modulate the impact of sample inconsistency. Furthermore, we design a curriculum learning approach that gradually increases the influence of inconsistent signals during training to improve overall performance. We evaluate our proposed method using public spontaneous BCI dataset. The experimental results confirm that our findings highlight the importance of addressing sample dominance for achieving robust performance in spontaneous BCIs.

Jeong-Hyun Cho, Byoung-Hee Kwon, Byeong-Hoo Lee et al.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) is a practical pathway to interpret users' intentions by decoding motor execution (ME) or motor imagery (MI) from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. However, developing a BCI system driven by ME or MI is challenging, particularly in the case of containing continual and compound muscles movements. This study analyzes three grasping actions from EEG under both ME and MI paradigms. We also investigate the classification performance in offline and pseudo-online experiments. We propose a novel approach that uses muscle activity pattern (MAP) images for the convolutional neural network (CNN) to improve classification accuracy. We record the EEG and electromyogram (EMG) signals simultaneously and create the MAP images by decoding both signals to estimate specific hand grasping. As a result, we obtained an average classification accuracy of 63.6($\pm$6.7)% in ME and 45.8($\pm$4.4)% in MI across all fifteen subjects for four classes. Also, we performed pseudo-online experiments and obtained classification accuracies of 60.5($\pm$8.4)% in ME and 42.7($\pm$6.8)% in MI. The proposed method MAP-CNN, shows stable classification performance, even in the pseudo-online experiment. We expect that MAP-CNN could be used in various BCI applications in the future.

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Jeong-Hyun Cho, Byung-Hee Kwon

Brain-computer interface uses brain signals to communicate with external devices without actual control. Many studies have been conducted to classify motor imagery based on machine learning. However, classifying imagery data with sparse spatial characteristics, such as single-arm motor imagery, remains a challenge. In this paper, we proposed a method to factorize EEG signals into two groups to classify motor imagery even if spatial features are sparse. Based on adversarial learning, we focused on extracting common features of EEG signals which are robust to noise and extracting only signal features. In addition, class-specific features were extracted which are specialized for class classification. Finally, the proposed method classifies the classes by representing the features of the two groups as one embedding space. Through experiments, we confirmed the feasibility that extracting features into two groups is advantageous for datasets that contain sparse spatial features.

Byoung-Hee Kwon, Jeong-Hyun Cho, Byeong-Hoo Lee

An electroencephalogram is an effective approach that provides a bidirectional pathway between user and computer in a non-invasive way. In this study, we adopted the visual perception data for training the visual imagery decoding network. We proposed a visual perception-guided network training approach for decoding visual imagery. Visual perception decreases the power of the alpha frequency range of the visual cortex over time when the user performed the task, and visual imagery increases the power of the alpha frequency range of the visual cortex over time as the user performed with the task. Generated brain signals when the user performing visual imagery and visual perception have opposite brain activity tendencies, and we used these characteristics to design the proposed network. When using the proposed method, the average classification performance of visual imagery with the visual perception data was 0.7008. Our results provide the possibility of using the visual perception data as a guide of the visual imagery classification network training.

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Byeong-Hee Kwon, Do-Yeun Lee et al.

Brain-computer interface uses brain signals to control external devices without actual control behavior. Recently, speech imagery has been studied for direct communication using language. Speech imagery uses brain signals generated when the user imagines speech. Unlike motor imagery, speech imagery still has unknown characteristics. Additionally, electroencephalography has intricate and non-stationary properties resulting in insufficient decoding performance. In addition, speech imagery is difficult to utilize spatial features. In this study, we designed length-wise training that allows the model to classify a series of a small number of words. In addition, we proposed hierarchical convolutional neural network structure and loss function to maximize the training strategy. The proposed method showed competitive performance in speech imagery classification. Hence, we demonstrated that the length of the word is a clue at improving classification performance.

Byoung-Hee Kwon, Byeong-Hoo Lee, Ji-Hoon Jeong

The electroencephalogram, a type of non-invasive-based brain signal that has a user intention-related feature provides an efficient bidirectional pathway between user and computer. In this work, we proposed a deep learning framework based on corresponding frequency empahsize method to decode the motor imagery (MI) data from 2020 International BCI competition dataset. The MI dataset consists of 3-class, namely 'Cylindrical', 'Spherical', and 'Lumbrical'. We utilized power spectral density as an emphasize method and a convolutional neural network to classify the modified MI data. The results showed that MI-related frequency range was activated during MI task, and provide neurophysiological evidence to design the proposed method. When using the proposed method, the average classification performance in intra-session condition was 69.68% and the average classification performance in inter-session condition was 52.76%. Our results provided the possibility of developing a BCI-based device control system for practical applications.

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Ji-Hoon Jeong, Kyung-Hwan Shim et al.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) decodes brain signals to understand user intention and status. Because of its simple and safe data acquisition process, electroencephalogram (EEG) is commonly used in non-invasive BCI. One of EEG paradigms, motor imagery (MI) is commonly used for recovery or rehabilitation of motor functions due to its signal origin. However, the EEG signals are an oscillatory and non-stationary signal that makes it difficult to collect and classify MI accurately. In this study, we proposed a band-power feature refining convolutional neural network (BFR-CNN) which is composed of two convolution blocks to achieve high classification accuracy. We collected EEG signals to create MI dataset contained the movement imagination of a single-arm. The proposed model outperforms conventional approaches in 4-class MI tasks classification. Hence, we demonstrate that the decoding of user intention is possible by using only EEG signals with robust performance using BFR-CNN.

Byeong-Hoo Lee, Ji-Hoon Jeong, Kyung-Hwan Shim et al.

A brain-computer interface (BCI) provides a direct communication pathway between user and external devices. Electroencephalogram (EEG) motor imagery (MI) paradigm is widely used in non-invasive BCI to obtain encoded signals contained user intention of movement execution. However, EEG has intricate and non-stationary properties resulting in insufficient decoding performance. By imagining numerous movements of a single-arm, decoding performance can be improved without artificial command matching. In this study, we collected intuitive EEG data contained the nine different types of movements of a single-arm from 9 subjects. We propose an end-to-end role assigned convolutional neural network (ERA-CNN) which considers discriminative features of each upper limb region by adopting the principle of a hierarchical CNN architecture. The proposed model outperforms previous methods on 3-class, 5-class and two different types of 7-class classification tasks. Hence, we demonstrate the possibility of decoding user intention by using only EEG signals with robust performance using an ERA-CNN.