Second order statistics based blind source separation for artifact correction of short ERP epochs

ERP is commonly obtained by averaging over segmented EEC epochs. In case artifacts are present in the raw EEC measurement, pre-processing is required to prevent the averaged ERP waveform being interfered by artifacts. The simplest pre-processing approach is by rejecting trials in which presence of artifact is detected. Alternatively artifact correction instead of rejection can be performed by blind source separation, so that waste of ERP trials is avoided. In this paper, we propose a second order statistics based blind source separation approach to ERP artifact correction. Comparing with blind separation using independent component analysis, second order statistics based method does not rely on higher order statistics or signal entropy, and therefore leads to more robust separation even if only short epochs are available.