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Single trial classification of fNIRS-based brain-computer interface mental arithmetic data: A comparison between different classifiers

Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an emerging technique for the in-vivo assessment of functional activity of the cerebral cortex as well as in the field of brain-computer-interface (BCI) research. A common challenge for the utilization of fNIRS for BCIs is a stable and reliable single trial classification of the recorded spatio-temporal hemodynamic patterns. Many different classification methods are available, but up to now, not more than two different classifiers were evaluated and compared on one data set. In this work, we overcome this issue by comparing five different classification methods on mental arithmetic fNIRS data: linear discriminant analysis (LDA), quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), support vector machines (SVM), analytic shrinkage regularized LDA (sLDA), and analytic shrinkage regularized QDA (sQDA). Depending on the used method and feature type (oxy-Hb or deoxy-Hb), achieved classification results vary between 56.1 % (deoxy-Hb/QDA) and 86.6% (oxy-Hb/SVM). We demonstrated that regularized classifiers perform significantly better than non-regularized ones. Considering simplicity and computational effort, we recommend the use of sLDA for fNIRS-based BCIs.