BCI Competition 2003--Data sets Ib and IIb: feature extraction from event-related brain potentials with the continuous wavelet transform and the t-value scalogram

The t-CWT, a novel method for feature extraction from biological signals, is introduced. It is based on the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and Student's t-statistic. Applied to event-related brain potential (ERP) data in brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigms, the method provides fully automated detection and quantification of the ERP components that best discriminate between two samples of EEG signals and are, therefore, particularly suitable for classification of single-trial ERPs. A simple and fast CWT computation algorithm is proposed for the transformation of large data sets and single trials. The method was validated in the BCI Competition 2003, where it was a winner (provided best classification) on two data sets acquired in two different BCI paradigms, P300 speller and slow cortical potential (SCP) self-regulation. These results are presented here.