Multivariate Temporal Dictionary Learning for EEG

This article addresses the issue of representing electroencephalographic (EEG) signals in an efficient way. While classical approaches use a fixed Gabor dictionary to analyze EEG signals, this article proposes a data-driven method to obtain an adapted dictionary. To reach an efficient dictionary learning, appropriate spatial and temporal modeling is required. Inter-channels links are taken into account in the spatial multivariate model, and shift-invariance is used for the temporal model. Multivariate learned kernels are informative (a few atoms code plentiful energy) and interpretable (the atoms can have a physiological meaning). Using real EEG data, the proposed method is shown to outperform the classical multichannel matching pursuit used with a Gabor dictionary, as measured by the representative power of the learned dictionary and its spatial flexibility. Moreover, dictionary learning can capture interpretable patterns: this ability is illustrated on real data, learning a P300 evoked potential. Keywords: Dictionary learning, orthogonal matching pursuit, multivariate, shift-invariance, EEG, evoked potentials, P300. 1. Introduction Scalp electroencephalography (EEG) measures electrical activity produced by post-synaptic potentials of large neuronal assemblies. Although this old medical imaging technique suffers from poor spatial resolution, EEG is still widely used in medical contexts (e.g. EEG devices are relatively cheap compared to other imaging techniques (e.g. MEG, fMRI, PET), and they offer both high temporal resolution (a short period of time between two acquisitions) and very low latency (a delay between the mental task and the recording on the electrodes).