Low-Density EEG Correction With Multivariate Decomposition and Subspace Reconstruction

A hybrid method is proposed for removing artifacts from electroencephalographic (EEG) signals. This relies on the integration of artifact subspace reconstruction (ASR) with multivariate empirical mode decomposition (EMD). The method can be applied when few EEG sensors are available, a condition in which existing techniques are not effective, and it was tested with two public datasets: 1) semisynthetic data and 2) experimental data with artifacts. One to four EEG sensors were taken into account, and the proposal was compared to both ASR and multivariate EMD (MEMD) alone. The proposed method efficiently removed muscular, ocular, or eye-blink artifacts on both semisynthetic and experimental data. Unexpectedly, the ASR alone also showed compatible performance on semisynthetic data. However, ASR did not work properly when experimental data were considered. Finally, MEMD was found less effective than both ASR and MEMD-ASR.