336 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 56, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2009
Automatic EEG Artifact Removal:
A Weighted Support Vector Machine
Approach With Error Correction
Shi-Yun Shao, Kai-Quan Shen, Chong Jin Ong, Member, IEEE, Einar P. V. Wilder-Smith, and Xiao-Ping Li∗
Abstract—An automatic electroencephalogram (EEG) artifact
removal method is presented in this paper. Compared to past meth-
ods, it has two unique features: 1) a weighted version of support vec-
tor machine formulation that handles the inherent unbalanced na-
ture of component classification and 2) the ability to accommodate
structural information typically found in component classification.
The advantages of the proposed method are demonstrated on real-
life EEG recordings with comparisons made to several benchmark
methods. Results show that the proposed method is preferable to
the other methods in the context of artifact removal by achieving
a better tradeoff between removing artifacts and preserving in-
herent brain activities. Qualitative evaluation of the reconstructed
EEG epochs also demonstrates that after artifact removal inherent
brain activities are largely preserved.
Index Terms—Artifact removal, electroencephalogram, error
correction, weighted support vector machine (SVM).
I. INTRODUCTION
LECTROENCEPHALOGRAM recordings are known to
E be contaminated by physiological artifacts from various
sources, such as blinking and movements of the eyes, beating
of the heart, and movements of other muscle groups [1]. These
artifacts are mixed together with the brain signals, making in-
terpretation of the EEG signals difficult [2].
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in apply-
ing independent component analysis (ICA) [3], [4] to artifact
removal in EEG [2], [5]–[11]. This is mainly motivated by the
fact that ICA is effective in decomposing raw EEG record-
ings into artifactual and nonartifactual independent components
(ICs) (see, e.g., [5], [8], and [10]). Nonartifactual ICs represent
signals from brain activations while artifactual ICs represent
electrical signals originating from noncerebral artifacts. In con-
ventional ICA-based artifact removal methods (see, e.g., [2], [9],
and [10]), artifactual ICs are manually identified (usually by vi-
sual inspection) and removed. This process is very time consum-
ing, and hence, not suitable for real-time applications. Recent
effort toward automatic artifact removal includes [12] and [13]
where a standard support vector machine (SVM) [14]–[17],
Manuscript received January 11, 2008; revised June 24, 2008. First published
October 3, 2008; current version published March 25, 2009. Asterisk indicates
corresponding author.
S.-Y. Shao, K.-Q. Shen, and C. J. Ong are with the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576, Singapore
(e-mail: shao@nus.edu.sg; mpeskq@nus.edu.sg; mpeongcj@nus.edu.sg).
E. P. V. Wilder-Smith is with the Division of Neurology, National University
Hospital, Singapore 119074, Singapore (e-mail: mdcwse@nus.edu.sg).
∗ X.-P. Li is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Divi-
sion of Bioengineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117576,
Singapore (e-mail: mpelixp@nus.edu.sg).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBME.2008.2005969
0018-9294/$25.00 © 2009 IEEE
trained on equal number of artifactual and nonartifactual sam-
ples, is used for automatic identification of artifactual ICs. Such
a combination of ICA and SVM offers a promising approach
for automatic artifact removal. Unfortunately, unique properties
of the problem at hand have not been taken into consideration.
First, the real data is extremely unbalanced—only a few of the
ICs are artifactual ICs and the majority is nonartifactual ICs (see,
e.g., [8], [18]–[21]). It is well known in the machine learning
community that the performance of a standard SVM, trained on
balanced dataset, may be poor when the real data is unbalanced.
Second, the number of artifactual ICs responsible for each type
of artifact, decomposed from a given EEG epoch, is often small.
This structural information of the underlying data can be very
useful in improving the accuracy of automatic artifact identifica-
tion. To the best of our knowledge, such structural information
has, however, not been exploited in past literature.
This paper shows a formulation that exploits the aforemen-
tioned unique properties by: 1) using weighted SVM [22] to han-
dle the unbalanced data and 2) imposing constraints on the num-
ber of artifactual ICs through a novel error correction algorithm.
It is worth noting that the proposed formulation is conceptually
different from past ICA-based artifact removal methods. It con-
siders all the ICs derived from a given EEG epoch collectively
while past methods treat each IC independently. The advantages
of the proposed method over a number of past methods in the
literature are shown in a carefully controlled experiment using
real-life EEG data.
II. OVERVIEW OF PROPOSED ARTIFACT REMOVAL SYSTEM
This section provides an overview of the proposed artifact
removal system and establishes the necessary notations needed
for subsequent sections. Like other ICA-based artifact removal
systems in the literature, the proposed system (see Fig. 1) con-
sists of four main modules: ICA, feature extractor, IC classifier,
and EEG reconstruction. The contribution of the present paper
is mainly on the new method used in the IC classifier, though
the feature extractor also includes some new features.
The continuous raw EEG recording is first segmented into
epochs with a fixed length. The resulting EEG epochs are then
fed, epoch by epoch, into the artifact removal system. Given a
raw EEG epoch as the input, the output of the system is the
reconstructed artifact-free EEG epoch.
Consider a given n-channel raw EEG epoch, X =
[x1 x2 . . . xn ]T where xi ∈ Rl , i = 1, . . . , n, is the time se-
ries for the ith EEG channel with a fixed length, l. The ICA
SHAO et al.: AUTOMATIC EEG ARTIFACT REMOVAL: WEIGHTED SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE APPROACH 337

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed automatic artifact removal system. The system consists of four main modules: ICA, feature extractor, IC classifier, and
EEG reconstruction module. The novelty of the proposed IC classifier is explicitly shown. It has two submodules: a modified probabilistic multiclass SVM (denoted
by weighted PWC_PSVM in the figure) to address the unbalanced nature of the data and an error correction block to handle the unique structural information of
the data.

module decomposes X into m (≤n) ICs, each representing gorithm. It is our attempt to address the unique properties of
an independent source. Let S = [s1 s2 . . . sm ]T denote the re- the problem. Given m ICs decomposed from an EEG epoch,
sulting ICs where si ∈ Rl , i = 1, . . . , m, is the ith IC and A = let mω j be the number of ICs corresponding to class ωj . The
[a1 a2 . . . am ] denote the mixing matrix with ai ∈ Rn containing unique properties of the problem can be effected in terms of the
the scalp distribution coefficients of si . While many implemen- following constraints:
tations of ICA are available, the popular FastICA package [23]
is used in the present study. mω 1 >> mω 2 ,mω 1 >> mω 3 , . . . , mω 1 >> mω c (1)
The feature extractor generates a set of feature vectors from
the si ’s needed for classification of the si ’s. Suppose d features and
are extracted from si . Then, f (si ) = [f1 (si )f2 (si ) . . . fd (si )]T
denotes the feature vector extracted from si and F(S) =
lω 2 ≤ mω 2 ≤ uω 2 , lω 3 ≤ mω 3 ≤ uω 3 , . . . , lω c ≤ mω c ≤ uω c .
[f (s1 )f (s2 ) . . . f (sm )]T denotes the set of feature vectors ob-
(2)
tained from S.
The constraints in (1) represent the inherent unbalanced na-
Suppose the si ’s are attributed to c different classes
ture of the data, while those as in (2) are the unique structural
{ω1 , . . . , ωc }, with ω1 being the class of brain sources and the
information that define the upper and lower bounds, denoted by
rest c-1 classes, i.e., ω2 , . . . , ωc , referring to different artifac-
uω j and lω j , respectively, with regards to the number of ICs be-
tual sources. Standard IC classifier in the literature [12], [13]
longing to each artifactual source. Optimal values of uω j and lω j
classifies si into one of c classes, or the decision function
depend on the bioelectrical nature of that artifact (for example,
d(f (si )) maps f (si ) into {ω1 , . . . , ωc }. Such a setup consid-
electrocardiogram (ECG) and electrooculogram (EOG) artifacts
ers si , i = 1, . . . , m, independently and is the framework used
generally have three spatial components each [24]), and the pro-
in most studies in the literature. However, it is difficult for such
tocol under which the EEG data are collected (e.g., the number
a setup to account for the unique structure of the underlying
of EEG channels used). Typically, they can be tuned by a data-
data. The proposed classifier, as shown in Fig. 1, considers the
driven approach. The details will be given in the description of
si ’s collectively and yields all m predicted class labels via the
the numerical experiments in Section IV.
decision function d(F(S)). Such a setup aims to incorporate
structural information of the dataset and address the unbalanced
nature of the data. The proposed d(F(S)) is based on a mod- A. Modified Probabilistic Multiclass SVM
ified version of probabilistic multiclass SVM. The choice of
Multiclass SVM is typically built up from several standard
SVM stems from its superior performance on many learning
binary SVMs [25], [26]. The proposed probabilistic multiclass
problems and a modification proposed in the present paper to
SVM is modified from a recently developed probabilistic mul-
address the unbalanced nature of the data is also a novel con-
ticlass SVM by Hastie and Tibshirani [27], by replacing all the
tribution. Justification to this choice is verified by experimental
standard binary SVMs with weighted SVMs [22], to properly
results compared with other classification approaches, like K-
address the unbalanced learning problem at hand. It is hereafter
nearest neighbors (KNN), Gaussian mixture models (GMM),
referred to as the weighted PWC_PSVM. The detailed imple-
and linear discriminant function (LDF). The detailed account of
mentation of the weighted PWC_PSVM is as follows.
the proposed IC classifier will be given in Section III.
Consider a nominal c-class unbalanced classification problem
The EEG reconstruction module reconstructs artifact-free
with dataset D in the form of {fi , yi }N i=1 , where fi ∈ R is the
d
EEG epoch by zeroing the contribution of all artifactual sources
ith sample and yi ∈ {ω1 , . . . , ωc } is the corresponding class
from raw EEG epoch. Suppose S̃ is obtained from S by zero-
label and N is the total number of training samples. Let Nj
ing all the identified artifactual ICs. The reconstructed artifact-
denote the number of training samples belonging to class ωj ,
free EEG epoch, denoted by X̃, can be obtained as follows:
and Dij := {fk , yk }f k ∈ω i ∪ω j be the subset of D formed by the
X̃ = AS̃.
samples from class ωi and ωj .
1) Construction of Weighted Binary SVMs: In total, c(c-
III. PROPOSED APPROACH
1)/2 weighted binary SVMs are constructed, each classifying
The proposed IC classifier is a combination of a modified a pair of classes. The weighted binary SVM classifying class
probabilistic multiclass SVM and a novel error correction al- ωi and class ωj are trained using Dij by solving the following
338 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 56, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

optimization problem [22]: where tk = (Ni + 1)/(Nj + 2) if fk ∈ ωi and tk = 1/(Nj +

1 ij T ij
ij
ij 2) if fk ∈ ωj . It is worth noting that a fivefold cross-validation
min (w ) w + Ciij ξk + Cjij ξk procedure is implicitly used in (8) as suggested by Platt [30].
wijij ,b ,ξ i j 2
f k ∈ω i f k ∈ω j This cross-validation process removes the requirement of keep-
ing a hold-out validation dataset for fitting the parameters
subject to wij · φij (fk ) + bij ≥ 1 − ξkij , if fk ∈ ωi
Aij and B ij , which is especially useful when the number
wij · φij (fk ) + bij ≤ −1 + ξkij , if fk ∈ ωj of training samples is small. Our implementation of (8) in-
cludes the modifications suggested by Lin et al. [31] for nu-
ξkij ≥0 ∀k (3) merical stability. The choice of kernel function in (5) is gen-
where φij is a nonlinear mapping function that maps feature vec- eral and our study is done with the popular Gaussian kernel,
tors into a high (possibly infinite) dimensional Euclidean space K ij (fr , fs ) = exp(−γ ij fr − fs 2 ) where γ ij is the kernel pa-
H; wij ∈ H, bij ∈ R are the parameters that determine the op- rameter.
timal separating hyperplane: wij · φij (f ) + bij = 0; ξkij ∈ R is 3) Estimating Multiclass Posterior Probability: Given the
the nonnegative slack variable. Different regularization param- pairwise class probabilities, pij (f ) and pj i (f )(= 1 − pij (f ))
eters, Ciij and Cjij , are introduced in (3) for the classes ωi and ∀i = j, the multiclass posterior probabilities of belonging to
ωj , respectively. A useful choice [28], [29] is to let ωi given f , denoted by pi (f ) ≡ P (ωi |f ), ∀i, can be estimated by
solving the following optimization problem [27], [32]:
Ciij /Cjij = Nj /Ni . (4)
c

 ji 2
min p (f )pi (f ) − pij (f )pj (f )
Conceptually, this is to impose higher penalty on classifica- p i (f )
i=1 j :j = i
tion errors made on the samples from the minority class.


c
In practice, the following dual formulation [14]–[17] is used subject to pi (f ) = 1 and pi (f ) ≥ 0. (9)
to find the numerical solution of (3): i=1

ij

ij
max J(αij ) = αk − αk αrij yk yr K ij (fk , fr), Let p(f (si )) = [p1 (f (si ))p2 (f (si )) . . . pc (f (si ))]T , repre-
f k ∈D i j f k ∈D i j f r ∈D i j
senting the vector of multiclass posterior probabilities, as given

by (9), for si , the ith IC derived from a given EEG epoch. It will
subject to yk αkij = 0 and be used in the proposed error correction algorithm described in
f k ∈D i j the next section.

0 ≤ αkij ≤ Ciij , if fk ∈ ωi , 0≤αkij ≤Cjij otherwise B. Error Correction

where αkij
is the nonnegative Lagrangian multiplier for the kth
sample and K ij (fk , fr ) = φij (fk ) · φij (fr ) is the kernel func-
tion. With the solution of (5), the output of the weighted binary
SVM for a test sample f is given by

ij
g ij (f ) = αk yk K ij (fk , f ) + bij .
f k ∈D i j
2) Generating Pairwise Class Probabilities: Standard SVM
classifies a sample f depending on the sign of g ij (f ), or the
half space in H into which φij (f ) falls. Such an approach,
however, ignores the relative confidence in the classification,
or the distance that φij (f ) is from the separating hyperplane.
Platt [30] proposes the use of the following sigmoid function
to map g ij (f ) into pij (f ) ≡ P (ωi |f , f ∈ ωi or ωj ), the pairwise
probability of belonging to class ωi knowing that f is from class
ωi or ωj
(5) Consider the classification of m feature vectors correspond-
ing to m ICs from a given EEG epoch, f (si ), i = 1, . . . , m. In-
stead of simply using d(f (si )) = arg maxk {pk (f (si ))} to clas-
sify each IC independently, the proposed IC classifier includes
a novel error correction algorithm that is aimed to incorporate
the structural information, as given in (2), by considering all the
(6) si , i = 1, . . . , m, collectively and yielding all m-predicted class
labels simultaneously.
In loose terms, the proposed error correction algorithm
is to find the m-predicted class labels that satisfy the con-
straints as in (2) and, at the same time, match the P(F(S)) =
[p(f (s1 ))p(f (s2 )) . . . p(f (sm ))] as much as possible. Let qi ∈
Rc be the code vector representing the predicted class label of
si . This implies that, if the predicted class label of si is k, the kth
element qik is equal to one and all the other elements in qi are
zeros. The proposed error correction algorithm is implemented
through the following mixed integer quadratic problem:


m

1 min qi − p(f (si ))

pij (f ) = (7) Q
i=1
1+ exp(Aij g ij (f ) + B ij )
subject to qij = 0 or 1 ∀i = 1, . . . , m ∀j = 1, . . . , c
where the parameters Aij and B ij are determined from mini-
mizing the negative log likelihood function, or

c

  qij = 1

 j =1
min − [t k log(p ij
(f k ))+(1−t k ) log(1−p ij
(f k ))]


A i j ,B i j   m m
f k ∈D i j lω 2 ≤ qi2 ≤ uω 2 , . . . ,lω c ≤ qic ≤ uω c (10)
(8) i=1 i=1
SHAO et al.: AUTOMATIC EEG ARTIFACT REMOVAL: WEIGHTED SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE APPROACH 339

where the optimization is over Q = [q1 , q2 , . . . , qm ]T . While i.e., the regularization parameters, Ciij and Cjij , and the kernel
various efficient solvers of (10) are available, the present study parameters, γ ij and 2) the lower and upper bounds for each type
uses the solver developed by Bemporad and Mignone [33]. With of artifactual ICs, i.e., uω j and lω j .
the solution of (10), Q, the si ’s (i = 1, . . . , m) are simultane- 1) Tuning of Hyperparameters: Since Ciij and Cjij are con-
ously classified by nected through (4), only one of them needs to be tuned. In the ex-
 T periments, (Ciij , γ ij ) were jointly tuned by a fivefold cross vali-
d(F(S))= arg max{q1k } arg max{q2k } · · · arg max{qm k } .
k k k dation [35] using the model selection tool in the LIBSVM pack-
(11) age [36] on the following grids: [2−5 , . . . , 210 ] × [2−10 , . . . , 23 ]
(step size = 20.5 ).
IV. NUMERICAL EXPERIMENTS 2) Tuning of uω j and lω j : As mentioned earlier, for ECG
In numerical experiments, we limited ourselves to the prob- and EOG artifacts, they generally have three spatial components
lem of automatic removal of ECG artifact and EOG artifact each [24]. ICA may output three artifactual ICs corresponding
in real-life EEG. The proposed IC classifier was quantitatively to the three spatial components if high-density EEG recordings
compared to several benchmark methods in a stringent subject- (such as 64-channel EEG) are used. However, the EEG data
wise cross-validation procedure. In addition, the reconstructed used in the present study were recorded from 17 locations in the
EEG epochs were reviewed by an independent EEG expert to standard 10–20 system and ICA tended to output less than three
qualitatively evaluate the performance of the proposed artifact artifactual ICs for both ECG and EOG artifacts. In the present
removal method. experiment, a simple grid search, with both uω j and lω j ranging
from 0 to 3 and a search step size of 1, was performed for ECG
ICs and EOG ICs, respectively, to obtain optimal values for uω j
A. Data Preparation
and lω j that gave the highest balanced accuracy.
Ten right-handed volunteers from local tertiary institutions
were selected for EEG measurements. These subjects fulfilled
the inclusion criteria of no history of cardiovascular disease, C. Quantitative Performance Evaluation
and normal eyesight with regular eye blinks. Informed con-
1) Subject-Wise Cross Validation: Among the subsets
sent was obtained and nominal monetary incentive was given
{Dk }10k =1 from ten subjects, samples from nine subjects were
for their participation. Multichannel unipolar EEG data were
used to form a training set Dtra , and the samples from the left-
recorded from 17 electrodes (excluding Fp1, Fp2) placed on the
out subject were used to form a testing set Dtes . Practically,
scalp according to the International 10–20 system [34] using the
this resampling procedure results in ten pairs of Dtra and Dtes
PL-EEG Wavepoint System (Medtronic, Inc., Denmark), with
in total. In the numerical experiments, for each pair of Dtra
sampling frequency of 167 Hz and a passband of 0.02–35 Hz
and Dtes , Dtra was used for tuning of parameters and training
using a customized bandpass filter implemented in LabView
of SVM. The trained classifier was then tested on the left-out
(version 6.1, National Instruments, USA). Five minutes of EEG
dataset Dtes . The major advantages of such subject-wise cross-
data were recorded from each subject with their eyes open and
validation procedure include that: 1) each testing set is inde-
in resting state.
pendent of the training set, and thus, the test error simulates the
These EEG recordings were first segmented into 12-s epochs
classifier’s generalization performance on other unseen subjects
(l = 2000). Each EEG epoch was then decomposed into ICs by
and 2) classifier performance obtained on multiple testing sets
the ICA. The ICs were manually labeled as EEG IC (class ω1 ),
can be used for evaluating the significance in the comparison of
EOG IC (class ω2 ), or ECG IC (class ω3 ) by an EEG expert in
two classifiers [37].
a random order. These labels were regarded as “true” labels,
2) Performance Measures: For a given testing set with c
against which the performance of IC classifiers was bench-
classes, let nij be the number of samples from ωi (true label)
marked.
being classified to ωj by the classifier (predicted label). The
Six features (d = 6) were extracted from each IC and they
following measures were used for evaluating the performance
were used as the chief information source, in place of the IC, for
of the proposed IC classifier.
classification. Four features were directly adopted from the liter-
a) Balanced accuracy:
It is the average

of accuracy on each
ature [13] for characterizing the EOG artifact and two new fea-
class, i.e. BA = 1c ci=1 (nii / cj =1 nij ) × 100%.
tures were proposed in the present study for characterizing the
b) RCI: It measures the amount of uncertainty about
ECG artifact. The detailed definitions of these features are given
the class of an input reduced by a classifier, i.e.,
in the Appendix. Combining the resulting feature vectors with
RCI = (HI − HO )/HI × 100%, where HI and
the “true” labels given by the EEG expert, a subject-wise data
HO denote the prior and posterior uncertainty
subset of 425 samples (25 epochs × 17 ICs), Dk := {fi , yi }425i=1 about the class
of an unseen input, respectively.
(k = 1, . . . , 10), was obtained for each subject.
Here,

c HI
= −
ci=1 (pin in
i log2 pi ),
where pin
i =
c c c out
n / n ; H = (p H O j ),
B. Parameter Selection
j =1 ij

c j =1
c
c
i=1 ij O j =1 j
where pout = n / n and H Oj =

c j i=1 ij i=1 j =1

ij
c
For the proposed IC classifier, two groups of parameters need − i=1 (pij log2 pij ) with pij = nij / i=1 nij . RCI
to be tuned: 1) the hyperparameters for each weighted SVM, has been shown to be a useful performance measure that
340 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 56, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

captures a detailed picture of classifier performance while

being immune to the effect of prior class probabilities [38].
c) Overall agreement: It measures the portion of cases
that two raters agree without distinguishing between
agreements

c
on
different classes [39], i.e. OA =
c c
i=1 nii / i=1 j =1 nij .
d) Specific agreement on each class: It measures the de-
gree of agreement on each class [39]. Specific
agreement
c
on

c class ω k is calculated as SA ω k
= 2nk k /( i=1 nik +
j =1 n k j ).
e) Cohen’s kappa: It is calculated as kappa =
(OA − EA)/(1 − EA), where OA refers to the
overall agreement and EA is
the
agreement
c c
expected

c by

c
c chance EA = k =1 ( i=1 nik ·
2
j =1 n k j )/( i=1 j =1 n ij ) [40].
3) Other Methods for Comparison: The proposed IC classi-
fier was compared to five benchmark methods: 1) the weighted
PWC_PSVM as given in Section III-A; 2) the standard SVM
trained on undersampled balanced dataset as used in [12]
and [13]; 3) GMM (with class conditional probability den-
sities estimated by using the software package developed by
Bouman [41]); 4) KNN (K from 1 to 9 were tested and the best
results obtained with K = 5 were reported); and 5) LDF using
the minimum-squared-error solution.

D. Qualitative Performance Evaluation by Reviewing

Reconstructed EEG
An independent EEG expert was invited to qualitatively eval-
uate the performance of the proposed artifact removal system by
examining each of the 250 raw EEG epochs and its correspond-
ing reconstructed EEG epoch simultaneously. The evaluation of
each epoch was based on three aspects: the removal of ECG
artifact, the removal of EOG artifact, and the preservation of
inherent brain activities (hereafter referred to as EEG preserva-
tion). The EEG expert was required to give detailed judgment on
each of these three aspects. For the evaluation of ECG or EOG
removal, “no improvement” was used to indicate that almost no
change was observed in the amount of artifacts before and after
artifact removal; “minor improvement” indicated that artifacts
were partially removed but still observed in the reconstructed
Fig. 2. Typical example of (a) a 12-s EEG epoch (the waveforms marked by
EEG; a score of “almost removed” was given when almost no rectangular and ellipse are typical ECG and eye-blinking artifacts, respectively),
considered artifact was observed in the reconstructed EEG. For (b) its resultant ICs given by ICA (the IC marked by ‘
’ was “true” EOG IC
the evaluation of EEG preservation, “major attenuation” was and the one marked by ‘ ’ was “true” ECG IC labeled by the EEG expert. The
IC marked by ‘ ’ was a “true” EEG IC but misclassified as ECG IC by the
used to indicate that inherent brain activities were significantly weighted PWC_PSVM. This misclassification was corrected by the proposed
attenuated; a score of “minor attenuation” was given when the error correction algorithm), and (c) the corresponding reconstructed EEG epoch
amplitude of inherent brain activities was slightly reduced but after artifact removal by the proposed method.
still clearly visible; “well preserved” indicated that almost no
change in brain activities was observed before and after artifact
removal.
from 250 EEG epochs from the ten subjects. Fig. 2(a) and (b)
shows a typical 12-s EEG epoch and the resulting ICs, respec-
E. Experimental Results tively. As can be seen, only one EOG IC (marked by “
”) and
1) Validation of Unique Properties of Learning Problem: one ECG IC (marked by “ ”) were separated from the EEG
The collected data as described in Section IV-A showed that epoch. This verified the unique properties of the learning prob-
among the 17 ICs separated from each 12-s EEG epoch, there lem at hand: the uneven class distributions and the underlying
were only one ECG IC and no more than two EOG ICs. In total, structural information, as given in (1) and (2). These properties
250 ECG ICs, 292 EOG ICs, and 3708 EEG ICs were separated were reaffirmed by the optimal values of uω j and lω j for EOG
SHAO et al.: AUTOMATIC EEG ARTIFACT REMOVAL: WEIGHTED SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE APPROACH 341

TABLE I
PERFORMANCE COMPARISON BETWEEN PROPOSED METHOD (I.E., WEIGHTED PWC_PSVM WITH ERROR CORRECTION) AND FIVE BENCHMARK METHODS
(WEIGHTED PWC_PSVM, STANDARD SVM, GMM, KNN, AND LDF)

ICs and ECG ICs determined through grid search, i.e., uω 2 = 2,
lω 2 = 1, uω 3 = lω 3 = 1.
2) Quantitative Comparison: Detailed classification results
and performance measures of the proposed method and the
benchmark methods are summarized in Table I. The numbers
shown are the averages over ten test datasets corresponding to
ten pairs of Dtra and Dtes . The P -values (given in parenthe-
ses) were obtained in the paired t-test [42], [43] between the
proposed method and each of the benchmark methods. Based
on the results in Table I, the proposed method appears to be
superior to all the benchmark methods. Details are as follows.
a) Comparison between proposed method and modeling ap-
proaches (including GMM, KNN, and LDF): As shown in
Table I, the proposed method achieved significantly higher
balanced accuracy and RCI than the modeling approaches.
It performed well on all the three classes. In comparison,
all the modeling approaches showed very good perfor-
mance on EEG ICs; however, their performance on EOG
and ECG ICs was not satisfying. In the context of artifact
removal, the proposed method, which achieved a better
tradeoff among removing artifacts and preserving inherent
brain activities, is preferable.
b) Comparison between the proposed method and the stan-
dard SVM: As can be seen from Table I, the proposed
method showed significant wins over the standard SVM
on all performance measures. The results given by the
confusion matrices suggest that the better performance of
the proposed method is mainly due to its higher accuracy
on EEG ICs as compared to the standard SVM (3520/3708
vs. 3424/3708). One plausible reason is that the standard
SVM, as used in [12] and [13], was trained on downsam-
pled balanced training data (with large portion of samples
of EEG ICs being discarded). Such downsampling causes
loss of information, and thus, leads to suboptimal perfor-
mance on the majority class [44].
c) Comparison between weighted PWC_PSVM with error
correction and weighted PWC_PSVM without error cor-
rection: As shown in Table I, the weighted PWC_PSVM
with error correction showed significant wins over the
weighted PWC_PSVM method without error correction
on almost all performance measures. The confusion matri-
ces show that the incorporation of error correction resulted
in a large increase in the accuracy on EEG ICs (3540/3708
vs. 3474/3708) at a tiny cost of the accuracy on ECG ICs
(246/250 vs. 248/250). It indicates the goodness of the pro-
posed error correction algorithm in that it helps to achieve
a better tradeoff between removing artifacts and preserving
inherent brain activities. Consider a batch of ICs resulting
from a given EEG epoch. The error correction algorithm
prevents the number of ICs predicted as ECG/EOG ICs
from either exceeding the corresponding upper limits or be-
ing less than the corresponding lower limits, as given in (2),
by picking out appropriate number of most probable arti-
factual ICs (with largest posterior probability of belonging
to the classes of ECG/EOG ICs). Fig. 2(b) shows a typical
example when the weighted PWC_PSVM classified two
ICs (marked by “ ” and “ ”, respectively) as ECG ICs
but the IC marked by “ ” was actually an EEG IC. The
proposed error correction algorithm corrected this error by
incorporating the constraint on ECG ICs: 1≤mω 3 ≤1.
3) Review of Reconstructed EEG: The qualitative evaluation
of the proposed artifact removal system by the independent EEG
expert is given in Table II. The amount of ECG artifacts was re-
duced in 98.4% of the epochs, with 98.0% indicated as “almost
removed” and 0.4% indicated as “minor improvement.” EOG
artifacts were removed in 96.8% of the epochs, with 92.0%
indicated as “almost removed” and 4.8% indicated as “minor
improvement.” In 88.4% of the epochs, inherent brain activities
were well preserved and in 10.8% of the epochs, brain activities
were slightly attenuated. Only 0.8% of the epochs suffered from
342 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 56, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009
TABLE II
QUALITATIVE EVALUATION OF PROPOSED METHOD ON ARTIFACT REMOVAL
AND EEG PRESERVATION BY INDEPENDENT EEG EXPERT
major attenuation in brain activities. Fig. 2(c) shows the recon-
structed EEG epoch corresponding to the raw EEG epoch shown
in Fig. 2(a) after artifact removal by the proposed method.
V. DISCUSSION
A novel IC classifier that combines a modified probabilistic
multiclass SVM and an error correction algorithm have been
proposed in the present study. The proposed approach has been
compared with several benchmark methods: the modified prob-
abilistic multiclass SVM as described in Section III-A without
error correction, the standard SVM used in [12], [13] GMM,
KNN, and LDF. In a stringent subject-wise cross-validation pro-
cedure, numerical experiments have shown that the proposed IC
classifier is preferable to the benchmark methods in the context
of artifact removal by achieving a better tradeoff between remov-
ing artifacts and preserving inherent brain activities. Moreover,
qualitative review of the reconstructed EEG epochs by an in-
dependent expert has demonstrated that after artifact removal,
inherent brain activities are largely preserved. The superiority
of the proposed approach can be attributed to the following
reasons.
First, the unbalanced nature of the underlying data is prop-
erly addressed by using the modified probabilistic multiclass
SVM. This multiclass SVM is modified from the probabilistic
multiclass SVM proposed by Hastie and Tibshirani [27], by re-
placing all standard binary SVMs with weighted SVMs. It uses
real unbalanced data for training and compensates the bias of
prior class probabilities by penalizing more on the classifica-
tion errors produced by the samples from the minority class. As
shown by experimental results, in comparison to the modeling
approaches (GMM, KNN, and LDF), the modified multiclass
SVM achieved a better tradeoff among classification perfor-
mance on each class by greatly increasing classification accu-
racy on EOG ICs and ECG ICs at the cost of a minor decrease
in classification accuracy on EEG ICs, making it preferable in
the context of artifact removal where it is aimed to effectively
remove artifacts while keeping inherent brain activities well
preserved. The proposed method is also superior to the standard
SVM used in [12] and [13], which was trained on a balanced
training set formed by downsampling of the majority class. The
downsampling inevitably causes loss of information, and thus,
leads to the suboptimal performance of the standard SVM on
the majority class [44].
Second, useful structural information of the underlying data
is incorporated in decision making through the error correction
algorithm. The structural information in the present study repre-
sents the constraints on the number of ICs responsible for each
type of artifact resulting from a given EEG epoch, as described
in (2). It is worth noting that this structural information is dif-
ferent from class priors: class priors can be directly included
by many modeling methods (e.g. KNN, GMM); however, the
constraints as of (2) exist among the batch of ICs resulting
from the same EEG epoch, and thus, can only be exploited by
considering the batch of ICs collectively (as the proposed er-
ror correction algorithm does). Conventional classifiers, such as
KNN, GMM, and LDF, which consider each sample indepen-
dently, are unable to incorporate such structural information.
As shown by experimental results, a better tradeoff between re-
moving artifacts and preserving brain activities is achieved by
incorporating this structural information through the error cor-
rection algorithm. The proposed error correction algorithm may
be significant in both theoretical and practical aspects. It ap-
pears generally useful for classification problems where similar
structural information is contained in the test samples, and thus,
simultaneous classification of several test samples is necessary.
Moreover, the use of a probabilistic SVM may also contribute
to the superior performance of the proposed method. Given a test
sample, f , the decision of conventional SVM is based on the sign
of standard SVM outputs, g ij (f ) as in (6), or the half space in
H into which φij (f ) falls. Such an approach ignores the relative
confidence in classification, or the distance that φij (f ) is from
the separating hyperplane. In contrast, the probabilistic SVM is
based on the calibrated confidence measures, i.e., the estimates
of posterior probabilities. The superiority of probabilistic SVM
over standard SVM has recently been demonstrated in a few
studies in the domain of machine learning (see [26], [30], [37],
and [45]), while its application in EEG signal processing re-
mains rare [46].
In the present study, we limit ourselves to the removal of
ECG and eye-blinking artifacts. However, the idea of the pro-
posed method can be generally extended to the removal of other
types of artifacts that can be isolated to one or more ICs by
ICA (e.g., artifact due to muscle tension), provided suitable
features are available. It should be acknowledged that possi-
ble discontinuities may result at the beginning and end of each
reconstructed EEG epoch, although it appears minimal in our
experiments. As a precaution, the segmentation should be re-
tained in the review/use of reconstructed EEG to prevent the
potential discontinuities from influencing EEG interpretation.
VI. CONCLUSION
A novel automatic EEG artifact removal method has been pre-
sented in this paper. The proposed method takes into account the
unique properties of the learning problem at hand by: 1) using
weighted probabilistic SVM to handle the unbalanced data and
2) implementing an error correction algorithm to accommodate
useful structural information of the underlying data. Quantita-
tive comparisons of the proposed method to several benchmark
methods on real-life EEG data showed that the proposed method
is preferable to the other methods in the context of artifact re-
moval by achieving a better tradeoff between removing artifacts
and preserving inherent brain activities. A qualitative review of
the reconstructed EEG epochs also revealed that artifacts were
SHAO et al.: AUTOMATIC EEG ARTIFACT REMOVAL: WEIGHTED SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE APPROACH 343

greatly attenuated while brain activities were largely preserved. and testing datasets. They do not require additional reference
The proposed method appears to be well suited for automatic EEG channels that are generally required in many non-ICA-
EEG artifact removal. based artifact removal methods.

APPENDIX REFERENCES
DEFINITIONS OF SIX FEATURES [1] T. P. Jung, S. Makeig, C. Humphries, T. W. Lee, M. J. McKeown,
V. Iragui, and T. J. Sejnowski, “Removing electroencephalographic arti-
Given an IC, si , the six features extracted from it are defined facts by blind source separation,” Psychophysiology, vol. 37, pp. 163–178,
as follows. 2000.
Feature 1: This feature is the ratio between the peak amplitude [2] E. Urrestarazu, J. Iriarte, M. Alegre, M. Valencia, C. Viteri, and J. Artieda,
“Independent component analysis removing artifacts in ictal recordings,”
and the variance of si [13], as given by Epilepsia, vol. 45, pp. 1071–1078, Sep. 2004.
[3] P. Comon, “Independent component analysis, a new concept?,” Signal
f1 (si ) = max(|si |)/σs2i (A1) Process., vol. 36, pp. 287–314, Apr. 1994.
[4] A. Hyvarinen, J. Karhunen, and E. Oja, Independent Component Analysis.
where σs i is the standard deviation of si . New York: Wiley, 2001.
Feature 2: The second feature is the normalized skewness of [5] T. P. Jung, C. Humphries, T. W. Lee, S. Makeig, M. J. McKeown, V. Lragui,
si [13], defined as and T. J. Sejnowski, “Removing electroencephalographic artifacts: Com-
  parison between ICA and PCA,” in Proc. IEEE Neural Netw. Signal
f2 (si ) = E{s3i }/σs3i  . (A2) Process., 1998, pp. 63–72.
[6] T. P. Jung, S. Makeig, M. Westerfield, J. Townsend, E. Courchesne, and T.
Feature 3: This feature measures the cross correlation be- J. Sejnowski, “Removal of eye activity artifacts from visual event-related
potentials in normal and clinical subjects,” Clin. Neurophysiol., vol. 111,
tween si and an independent reference dataset containing eye- pp. 1745–1758, Oct. 2000.
blinking-dominated EEG channels (Fp1, Fp2, F3, F4, O1, O2), [7] G. L. Wallstrom, R. E. Kass, A. Miller, J. F. Cohn, and A. F. Nathan,
x0j (j = 1, . . . , 6) [13], which is distinct from the training and “Automatic correction of ocular artifacts in the EEG: A comparison of
regression-based and component-based methods,” Int. J. Psychophysiol.,
testing datasets. It is calculated as vol. 53, pp. 105–119, Jul. 2004.
[8] N. P. Castellanos and V. A. Makarov, “Recovering EEG brain signals:


6

 Artifact suppression with wavelet enhanced independent component anal-
f3 (si ) = max(E x0j (m)si (m + τ ) )/6. (A3)
τ
j =1
Feature 4: This feature is the Kullback–Leibler (KL) distance
between the probability density function (PDF) of si and that
of a reference EOG IC, which is separated from an EEG epoch
distinct from the data used for training and testing, s0eog [13]. It
is calculated as
 pp. 395–404, 1997.
f4 (si ) = P(si ) ln(P(si )/P(s0eog )) dsi (A4)
where P(si ) and P(s0eog ) are the PDFs of si and s0eog ,
respectively.
Feature 5: The fifth feature is the variance of scalp distribution
of si , given by
f5 (si ) = var(ai / ai ) (A5)
where ai refers to the scalp distribution coefficients in mixing
matrix corresponding to si . This feature is specially proposed
for ECG ICs because empirical evidences have shown that their
unique scalp distribution gives smaller variance compared to
other types of ICs [47].
Feature 6: This feature gives the KL distance between the
PDF of si and that of a reference ECG IC, s0ecg . It is described
as
 T. J. Sejnowski, “Analysis and visualization of single-trial event-related
f6 (si ) = P(si ) ln(P(si )/P(s0ecg )) dsi (A6)
where P(si ) and P(s0ecg ) are the PDFs of si and s0ecg , respec-
tively. This feature is proposed to account for distinct PDFs
of ECG ICs due to their unique composition of P wave, QRS
complex, and T wave.
It is worth noting that features 3, 4, and 6 require reference ICs
obtained from distinct EEG epochs that are not part of training
ysis,” J. Neurosci. Methods, vol. 158, pp. 300–312, Dec. 2006.
[9] S. Makeig, A. J. Bell, T. P. Jung, and T. J. Sejnowski, “Independent
component analysis of electroencephalographic data,” Adv. Neural Inf.
Process. Syst., vol. 8, pp. 145–151, 1996.
[10] R. Vigário, J. Särelä, V. Jousmäki, M. Hämäläinen, and E. Oja, “Indepen-
dent component approach to the analysis of EEG and MEG recordings,”
IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. 47, no. 5, pp. 589–593, May 2000.
[11] R. Vigário, “Extraction of ocular artifacts from EEG using independent
component analysis,” Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol., vol. 103,
[12] N. Nicolaou and S. J. Nasuto, “Temporal independent component analysis
for automatic artifact removal from EEG,” in Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. MDSIP,
2004, pp. 5–8.
[13] L. Shoker, S. Sanei, and J. Chambers, “Artifact removal from electroen-
cephalograms using a hybrid BSS-SVM algorithm,” IEEE Signal Process.
Lett., vol. 12, no. 10, pp. 721–724, Oct. 2005.
[14] B. Boser, I. Guyon, and V. Vapnik, “A training algorithm for optimal
margin classifiers,” in Proc. 5th Annu. Workshop Comput. Learn. Theory,
New York: ACM, 1992, pp. 144–152.
[15] C. Cortes and V. Vapnik, “Support-vector networks,” Mach. Learn.,
vol. 20, pp. 273–297, 1995.
[16] V. N. Vapnik, “The vicinal risk minimization principle and the SVMs,”
The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory, 2nd ed. New York: Springer-
Verlag, 1995.
[17] N. Cristianini and J. Shawe-Taylor, An Introduction to Support Vector Ma-
chines and Other Kernel-Based Learning Methods. Cambridge, U.K:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000.
[18] C. A. Joyce, I. F. Gorodnitsky, and M. Kutas, “Automatic removal of
eye movement and blink artifacts from EEG data using blind component
separation,” Psychophysiology, vol. 41, pp. 313–325, Mar. 2004.
[19] T. P. Jung, S. Makeig, M. Westerfield, J. Townsend, E. Courchesne, and
potentials,” Hum. Brain Mapp., vol. 14, pp. 166–185, 2001.
[20] S. Romero, M. A. Mailanas, S. Clos, S. Gimenez, and M. J. Barbanoj,
“Reduction of EEG artifacts by ICA in different sleep stages,” in Proc.
25th IEEE Annu. Int. Conf. Eng. Med. Biol. Soc., Cancun, Mexico, 2003,
pp. 2675–2678.
[21] J. Onton and S. Makeig, “Information-based modeling of event-related
brain dynamics,” in Progress in Brain Research Book Series, vol. 159,
C. Neuper and W. Klimesch, Eds. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier,
2006, pp. 99–120.
[22] E. Osuna, R. Freund, and F. Girosi, “Support vector machines: Training
and applications,” MIT A. I. Lab., Lexington, MA, A.I. Memo 1602, 1997.
344 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 56, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009
[23] H. Gävert, J. Hurri, J. Särelä, and A. Hyvärinen. (2005, Oct. 19).
The FastICA Package for MATLAB (version 2.5) [Online]. Available:
http://www.cis.hut.fi/projects/ica/fastica/
[24] A. Schlögl, C. Keinrath, D. Zimmermann, R. Scherer, R. Leeb, and
G. Pfurtscheller, “A fully automated correction method of EOG arti-
facts in EEG recordings,” Clin. Neurophysiol., vol. 118, pp. 98–104, Oct.
2007.
[25] C. W. Hsu and C. J. Lin, “A comparison of methods for multi-class support
vector machines,” IEEE Trans. Neural Netw., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 415–425,
Mar. 2002.
[26] K. Duan and S. S. Keerthi, “Which is the best multiclass SVM method?
An empirical study,” Lect. Notes Comput. Sci., vol. 3541, pp. 278–285,
2005.
[27] T. Hastie and R. Tibshirani, “Classification by pairwise coupling,” Ann.
Stat., vol. 26, pp. 451–471, 1998.
[28] F. Markowetz, “Support vector machines in bioinformatics” M.S. the-
sis, Dept. Math. Ruprecht-Karls Univ. Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany,
2001.
[29] T. Eitrich and B. Lang, “Efficient optimization of support vector machine
learning parameters for unbalanced data sets,” J. Comput. Appl. Math.,
vol. 196, pp. 425–436, 2006.
[30] J. C. Platt, “Probabilistic outputs for support vector machines and com-
parisons to regularized likelihood methods,” in Advances in Large Margin
Classifiers, A. Smola, P. Bartlett, B. Scholkopf, and D. Schuurmans, Eds.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
[31] H. T. Lin, C. J. Lin, and R. C. Weng, “A note on Platt’s probabilistic
outputs for support vector machines,” Dept. Comput. Sci., Nat. Taiwan
Univ., Taipei, Taiwan, Tech. Rep., 2003.
[32] T. F. Wu and C. J. Lin, “Probability estimates for multi-class classifica-
tion by pairwise coupling,” J. Mach. Learn. Res., vol. 5, pp. 975–1005,
2004.
[33] A. Bemporad and D. Mignone. (2001, May 9). A Matlab Function for Solv-
ing Mixed Integer Quadratic Programs (version 1.06) [Online]. Available:
http://control.ethz.ch/∼hybrid/miqp/
[34] H. H. Jasper, “The ten-twenty electrode system of the international fed-
eration,” Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol., vol. 10, pp. 371–375,
1958.
[35] K. R. Muller, S. Mika, G. Ratsch, K. Tsuda, and B. Scholkopf, “An
introduction to kernel-based learning algorithms,” IEEE Trans. Neural
Netw., vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 181–201, Mar. 2001.
[36] C. Chang and C. Lin. (2007, Apr. 1). LIBSVM: A Library
for Support Vector Machines (version 2.84) [Online]. Available:
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/∼cjlin/libsvm
[37] K. Q. Shen, C. J. Ong, X. P. Li, H. Zheng, and E. P. V. Wilder-Smith, “A
feature selection method for multilevel mental fatigue EEG classification,”
IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., vol. 54, no. 7, pp. 1231–1237, Jul. 2007.
[38] V. Sindhwani, P. Bhattacharya, and S. Rakshit, “Information theoretic
feature crediting in multiclass support vector machines,” presented at the
1st SIAM Int. Conf. Data Mining, Chicago, IL, 2001.
[39] G. Hripcsak and D. F. Heitjan, “Measuring agreement in medical infor-
matics reliability studies,” J. Biomed. Inf., vol. 35, pp. 99–110, 2002.
[40] J. Cohen, “A coefficient of agreement for nominal scales,” Educ. Psychol.
Meas., vol. 20, pp. 37–46, 1960.
[41] C. A. Bouman. (1997, Apr.). Cluster: An Unsupervised Algorithm
for Modeling Gaussian Mixtures [Online]. Available: http://cobweb.ecn.
purdue.edu/∼bouman/software/cluster/
[42] G. E. P. Box, W. G. Hunter, and J. S. Hunter, Statistics for Experimenters:
An Introduction to Design, Data Analysis, and Model Building. New York:
Wiley, 1978.
[43] E. Alpaydin, “Assessing and comparing classification algorithms,” Intro-
duction to Machine Learning, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
[44] Y. Liu, A. An, and X. Huang, “Boosting prediction accuracy on imbalanced
datasets with SVM ensembles,” in Proc. ECML/PKDD 2004 Workshop
SAWM, Pisa, Italy, pp. 2–13.
[45] K. Q. Shen, C. J. Ong, X. P. Li, and E. P. V. Wilder-Smith, “Feature
selection via sensitivity analysis of SVM probabilistic outputs,” Mach.
Learn., vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 1–20, 2008.
[46] K. Q. Shen, X. P. Li, C. J. Ong, S. Y. Shao, and E. P. V. Wilder-Smith,
“EEG-based mental fatigue measurement using multi-class support vec-
tor machines with confidence estimate,” Clin. Neurophysiol., vol. 119,
pp. 1524–1533, 2008.
[47] A. Greco, N. Mammone, F. Morabito, and M. Versaci, “Semi-automatic
artifact rejection procedure based on kurtosis, Renyi’s entropy and inde-
pendent component scalp maps,” Int. J. Biomed. Sci., vol. 1, pp. 12–16,
2005.
Shi-Yun Shao received the B.Eng. and M.Eng. de-
grees in biomedical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong
University, Shaanxi, China, in 2003 and 2006, re-
spectively. She is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree in the Department of Mechanical Engineer-
ing, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Her current research interests include electroen-
cephalogram artifact removal, blind source separa-
tion, and machine learning.
Kai-Quan Shen received the B.S. degree from the
University of Science and Technology of China,
Hefei, China, in 2001.
In 2007, he joined the National University of Sin-
gapore, Singapore, as a Research Fellow with the
Neurosensors Laboratory, Department of Mechanical
Engineering. His current research interests include
feature selection methods, support vector machines,
brain signal processing, blind signal separation, and
the investigation of neurophysiological mechanisms
of human brain using functional MRI.
Chong Jin Ong (S’91–M’92) received the B.Eng.
(Hons) and M.Eng. degrees in mechanical engineer-
ing from the National University of Singapore, Singa-
pore, in 1986 and 1988, respectively, and the M.S.E.
and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical and applied me-
chanics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
in 1992 and 1993, respectively.
He joined the National University of Singapore in
1993 and is now an Associate Professor with the De-
partment of Mechanical Engineering. His current re-
search interests include algorithms for machine learn-
ing, feature selection, and robust control.
Einar P. V. Wilder-Smith received the M.B.B.S
(equivalent) and M.D. degrees from Heidelberg Uni-
versity, Heidelberg, Germany, in 1986 and 1989, re-
spectively.
He joined the National University of Singapore,
Singapore, in 2001, and is now a Full Professor and
Director of Research in the Department of Medicine,
where he is also the head of the Neurology Diagnos-
tic Laboratory. His current research interests include
the field of clinical neuropathysiology, particularly
EEG changes in relation to emotions and neurological
disorders.
Xiao-Ping Li received the Ph.D. degree in mechani-
cal and manufacturing engineering from the Univer-
sity of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, in 1991.
He joined the National University of Singapore,
Singapore, in 1992, and is currently a Full Professor
with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and
Division of Bioengineering. His current research in-
terests include neurosensors and nanomachining. He
is the holder of six patents, and two patents that are
pending. He is the author or coauthor of 230 technical
publications, of which 118 are international refereed
journal papers. He supervised six postdoctoral research fellows, 13 Ph.D. degree
students, and 23 master’s degree students.
Prof. Li is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, a
Senior Member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and a Senior
Member of the North American Manufacturing Institute of the SME. He is a
Guest Editor of the International Journal of Computer Applications in Tech-
nology, an Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Abrasive
Technology and Engineering, an Editorial Advisor of the Chinese Journal of
Mechanical Engineering, and a regular Reviewer of 14 international journals.