IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation & Measurement

Efficient Rejection of Artifacts for Short-term Few-channel EEG Based on Fast

Adaptive Multidimensional Sub-bands Blind Source Separation
--Manuscript Draft--

Manuscript Number: TIM-21-02113R1

Article Type: Regular Article

Section/Category:

Keywords: Multidimensional sub-bands; blind source separation; short term; few-channel EEG;
artifacts

Corresponding Author: Yan Liu, Ph.D.

Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences
Suzhou, CHINA

First Author: Siqi Zhang, B.S.

Order of Authors: Siqi Zhang, B.S.

Bo You, Ph.D.

Xun Lang, Ph.D.

Yuanfeng Zhou, Ph.D.

Fulai An, M.S.

Yakang Dai, Ph.D.

Yan Liu, Ph.D.

Abstract: Artifacts rejection is crucial to electroencephalogram (EEG) application. And short-term

few-channel EEG (e.g., in real-time detection of stress level and motor imagery) brings
new challenges for removing artifacts due to less data. Existing artifact removal
methods cannot guarantee both effectiveness and efficiency for removing artifacts from
short-term few-channel EEG. Consequently, we propose a fast adaptive
multidimensional sub-bands blind source separation method to remove artifacts from
short-term few-channel EEG recordings effectively and efficiently. Firstly, noise-
assisted fast multivariate empirical mode decomposition (NA-FMEMD), as a fast
adaptive multidimensional sub-bands decomposition method, is employed to
decompose short-term few-channel EEG recordings into multidimensional sub-bands.
Then canonical correlation analysis (CCA), as a blind source separation method, is
used to estimate artifacts-related and EEG-related sources. Finally, EEG-related
sources are intelligently selected and reconstructed as clean EEG. The results
demonstrate that our method takes at least 5 times less computing time for 2-s few-
channel EEG recordings than state-of-the-art methods with similar effectiveness, using
the same computer and software. Therefore, our method enhances the efficiency of
removing artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG while ensuring effectiveness, and
it is more suitable for real-time processing.

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Efficient Rejection of Artifacts for Short-term
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7 Few-channel EEG Based on Fast Adaptive
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Multidimensional Sub-bands Blind Source
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12 Separation
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15 Siqi Zhang, Bo You, Xun Lang, Yuanfeng Zhou, Fulai An, Yakang Dai, and Yan Liu
16
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18  few-channel EEG while ensuring effectiveness, and it is
19 Abstract—Artifacts rejection is crucial to more suitable for real-time processing.
20
electroencephalogram (EEG) application. And short-term
21 Index Terms—Multidimensional sub-bands, blind source
few-channel EEG (e.g., in real-time detection of stress level
22 separation, short term, few-channel EEG, artifacts.
and motor imagery) brings new challenges for removing
23
artifacts due to less data. Existing artifact removal methods
24 I. INTRODUCTION
cannot guarantee both effectiveness and efficiency for
25
removing artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG. EASUREMENT of brain’s electrical activity is a crucial
26
27
Consequently, we propose a fast adaptive multidimensional
sub-bands blind source separation method to remove
M way to get brain information. Electroencephalogram
(EEG) is a measure of the brain’s electrical activity as sensed
28
29 artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG recordings by several electrodes on the scalp. EEG is used widely with
30 effectively and efficiently. Firstly, noise-assisted fast advantages of high temporal resolution, low cost, and
31 multivariate empirical mode decomposition (NA-FMEMD), noninvasiveness [1]. The development of portable hardware for
32 as a fast adaptive multidimensional sub-bands EEG recording and the appearance of improved technologies
33 decomposition method, is employed to decompose for EEG processing have motivated the emergence of novel
34 short-term few-channel EEG recordings into
EEG applications in daily life [2]-[4], for instance real-time
35 multidimensional sub-bands. Then canonical correlation
detection of stress level [5], [6] and motor imagery [7], [8].
36 analysis (CCA), as a blind source separation method, is
used to estimate artifacts-related and EEG-related sources. Short-term few-channel EEG is usually analyzed in these
37 applications since EEG with short term (e.g., <=5s) can reduce
38 Finally, EEG-related sources are intelligently selected and
reconstructed as clean EEG. The results demonstrate that the computational load and enhance the feedback, and EEG
39
our method takes at least 5 times less computing time for with few channels (e.g., 3~6 channels) can promote portability
40
2-s few-channel EEG recordings than state-of-the-art and wearability. Hence, short-term few-channel EEG is being
41
42 methods with similar effectiveness, using the same used more and more widely.
43 computer and software. Therefore, our method enhances However, the EEG is very weak (in μV) and easily
44 the efficiency of removing artifacts from short-term contaminated with artifacts from various sources such as
45 muscles, eye blinks, and white noises [9]-[11]. Hence, artifacts
46 Manuscript submitted for review on June 30, 2021. This work was rejection is unavoidable for applications of EEG. And it is
47 supported in part by the National Nature Science Foundation of China under difficult to remove artifacts from EEG due to the diversity of
48 S. Zhang is with the Department of Mechanical and Power Engineering, artifacts [12]. Especially, short-term few-channel EEG with
Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin 150080, China, and also
49 with Heilongjiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Complex Intelligent System less data brings new challenges for removing artifacts.
50 and Integration, Harbin 150080, China. (e-mail: rzsq0616@163.com) Therefore, there is a pressing need for a method to remove
51 B. You is with the Department of Mechanical and Power Engineering, artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG.
52 Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin 150080, China. (e-mail:
youbo@hrbust.edu.cn)
Currently, ICA [13], as a blind source separation (BSS)
53 X. Lang is with the Department of Information, Yunnan University, method, is often used for removing artifacts from EEG (e.g., in
54 Kunming 650000, China. EEGLab [14]). Under the assumption that the signals from
55 Y. Zhou is with the Children’s Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai
200000, China.
different sources are independent and linearly mixed, ICA
56
F. An is with the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Beijing separates EEG recordings into independent components (ICs)
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58
100000, China. by exploiting higher-order statistics without any a priori
Y. Dai is with the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and knowledge of the sources [15], [16]. Then artifact-related ICs
59 Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou 215163, China. (e-mail:
60 daiyk@sibet.ac.cn) can be identified and removed. Finally, artifact-free EEG can
61 Y. Liu is with the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and be obtained by reconstruction. Many papers have proven that
Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou 215163, China. (e-mail: ICA is an effective method for removing artifacts. However,
62 liuyan@sibet.ac.cn)
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2 the effectiveness of ICA relies on the length of data and destroys the completeness of the original EEG. To eliminate
3 experience suggests that 10-s epochs usually give good results Gaussian white noise as much as possible, the resulting
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[17], [18]. Moreover, the computational time of ICA is long sub-bands are obtained by averaging the results of
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because this method is based on higher-order statistics. Hence, decomposition over an ensemble of noisy versions of the
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7 ICA may not be an appropriate method for removing artifacts original EEG. Hence, the computational time of EEMD is long,
8 from short-term few-channel EEG. and EEMD-based methods cannot remove artifacts efficiently
9 Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) is another common [23].
10 method of BSS for artifacts removal [19]. CCA does not require Variational mode decomposition (VMD) is a novel method,
11 the assumption like ICA. The principle is to force estimated which outperforms EMD in signal decomposition and noise
12 sources of EEG recordings maximally auto-correlated and robustness [31]. It has been proved that VMD-CCA
13 mutually uncorrelated [20]. Then artifact-related sources in outperforms EEMD-CCA on removing muscle artifacts [25].
14 EEG can be identified by their autocorrelation. Paper [21] and However, VMD-based methods’ effectiveness specifically
15 [22] have proven that the performance of CCA is superior to depends on VMD parameters needed to be determined in
16 ICA in removing artifacts. And since exploiting second-order advance, and VMD is prone to over decompose. Meanwhile,
17 statistics, CCA can remove artifacts more effectively than ICA VMD-based methods need the signal to be sufficiently
18 [21]. However, under the assumption that the number of stationary where the spectral bands of mode should not change
19 underlying sources is not greater than the number of channels, drastically [32]. Hence, when EEG contained artifacts with
20 CCA cannot effectively remove artifacts from few-channel different frequency bands, VMD-based artifacts removal
21
EEG. In other words, CCA can decompose N sources from methods’ robustness may worsen.
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23 N-channel signals at most. It, especially in the case of More importantly, these one-dimensional sub-bands BSS
24 few-channel EEG, may cause sources generated by brain methods have a common problem. The computational time is
25 activities and artifacts cannot be separated effectively. long and increases with the number of channels, because these
26 Therefore, it is necessary to promote CCA for removing methods decompose few-channel EEG channel by channel.
27 artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG efficiently. Hence, a method that can remove artifacts with less time than
28 Researchers try to combine BSS technologies with one-dimensional sub-bands BSS methods is needed.
29 sub-bands decomposition technologies (shorten as sub-bands Recently, we proposed a fast adaptive multidimensional
30 BSS), rendering BSS more reliable for artifacts removal in sub-bands decomposition technology named Noise Assisted
31 EEG, especially in few-channel EEG [23]-[29]. The existing Fast Multivariate EMD (NA-FMEMD) [33], [34] to address the
32 sub-bands decomposition methods can be divided into above problems. Compared with one-dimensional sub-bands
33 one-dimensional sub-bands decomposition methods and decomposition methods, NA-FMEMD can decompose all
34 multidimensional sub-bands decomposition methods. channels of scalp EEG into multidimensional sub-bands at the
35 One-dimensional sub-bands decomposition technologies same time, which takes less computational time. And
36 decompose few-channel EEG in a channel-by-channel way. NA-FMEMD can also avoid mode mixing by adding extra
37
Wavelet transform (WT), Empirical-mode decomposition noise-assisted channels to enforce an aligned quasi-dyadic filter
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39 (EMD), Ensemble EMD (EEMD), and variational mode structure on the sub-bands, which guarantee the completeness
40 decomposition (VMD), as one-dimensional sub-bands of the original EEG. NA-FMEMD can also avoid the
41 technologies, are usually combined with BSS to remove over-decomposition problem, allowing wider applications of
42 artifacts from EEG. the EMD-based algorithms in processing shorter time series or
43 WT-based methods are limited since the choice of basic data with low sampling rate [33].
44 functions greatly impacts its effectiveness [27], [28]. Hence, considering the existing artifacts removal methods
45 Empirical-mode decomposition (EMD) is a data-driven cannot guarantee effectiveness and efficiency simultaneously
46 adaptive sub-bands method, which does not need to define for removing artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG, we
47 basis functions like WT. By gradually reducing the propose a multidimensional sub-bands BSS method,
48 low-frequency components of a signal, EMD can decompose NA-FMEMD-CCA, for efficiently and effectively removing
49 the signal into several sub-bands. The sub-bands represent the artifacts. In this study, CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD-CCA, and
50 intrinsic oscillation mode of the signal and are known as the VMD-CCA are selected as compared methods. And muscles,
51 intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). However, the EMD based eye blinks, and white noises, as usual artifacts in EEG, are
52 methods are prone to mode mixing due to EMD’s poor selected to remove for comparing the performance of different
53
robustness to noise, complicating the distinction between methods. The results demonstrate our proposed method
54
artifacts and EEG. enhances the efficiency of removing artifacts from short-term
55
56 Ensemble EMD (EEMD) algorithm proposed by Wu et al. few-channel EEG while ensuring effectiveness.
57 can improve the robustness of EMD [30]. This method adds The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section
58 Gaussian white noise to the original signal to fill the scale gap II introduces our proposed method; Section III gives the
59 in the original signal, eliminating the mode mixing effect of the experimental results and discussions; At last, Section IV gives a
60 EMD algorithm. However, the intrusive Gaussian white noise conclusion.
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19 Fig. 1. A flowchart for removing artifacts by NA-FMEMD-CCA method.
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where is the mixing matrix for calculating (t) .
21
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II. METHODS Since and (t) are unknown, BSS techniques can be utilized
23 In this section, we define the mathematical symbols firstly. to solve this problem. Estimated values of (t) and an
24 Secondly, we model the problem. Finally, we describe our un-mixing matrix can be figured out via the BSS. For
25 proposed method in five parts. computing (t), we can follow the step:
26 ̂ (t) (t) (4)
A. Symbols ̂
27 where (t) is the estimated value of (t), is the un-mixing
28 In this work, we make the rules for mathematical symbols as matrix. The autocorrelation coefficients of each estimated
29 follows: source in ̂ (t) can be calculated. Due to muscle artifacts and
30 1) Scalars are represented by italic letters. white noises with lower autocorrelation coefficients and
31 2) Vectors are represented by lowercase bold letters. eye-blink artifacts with higher autocorrelation coefficients than
32 3) Matrices are represented by uppercase bold letters. brain activities [20], [21], [35], two thresholds (T1, T2) can be
33 4) Superscripts T means transpose.
34 estimated to remove artifacts. Estimated sources with
35 B. Problem Modeling autocorrelation coefficient greater than T1 in ̂ (t) are regarded
36 We assume that N-channel EEG recordings, denoted as eye-blink-related sources and lower than T2 are regarded as
37 by (t) [ (t), , (t)]T , are composed of a linear mixture of muscle-related sources and white-noise-related sources.
38 M uncorrelated unknown sources, denoted The ̂ (t) without artifacts, denoted by ̂ (t), can be obtained
39 by (t) [ (t), , (t)]T , t , , , , where , , , are ̂
by setting the artifact-related sources in (t) to zero. Then the
40 sampling points. Then (t) can be expressed as: artifact-free (t), denoted by (t), can be calculated
41 (t) (t) (1) by
42 ̂
where is the mixing matrix. (t) (t) (5)
43
For the few-channel EEG, N is set to 3 to 6 and M > N. Finally, we can obtain corrected EEG by
44
Before using BSS techniques, (t) is decomposed into
45 (t) ∑ (t) (t) (6)
46 ( ) sub-bands and a set of residuals by NA-FMEMD to 1
47 avoid the underdetermined problem. K sub-bands are the (t) [ 1
(t), , (t)]T (7)
48 decomposition products of assisted noises. Remove them t
where g
(t) represents the artifact-free sub-band
49 directly. The sub-bands corresponding to few-channel EEG can
50 be denoted as after removing artifacts in the t channel, (t) is the
t
51 IMF (t )  [imf1 (t ),, imfG (t ),, imf1 (t ),, imfG (t )]  {imfg (t )} corrected EEG of
1 1 N N T n channel, and (t) is a matrix of
52 , g = 1 to G, n = 1 to N, where g is ID number of (t) of each dimension representing corrected EEG of all channels. The
53 details about the proposed NA-FMEMD-CCA artifacts
channel. The residuals can be written as (t) [ (t), , (t)],
54 removal method are presented as follows.
55 where (t) is a residual of t channel EEG. Hence, the
56 relationship between the t channel EEG and sub-bands can be C. Overview of the Proposed NA-FMEMD-CCA Artifacts
57 described by Removal Method
58 Fig. 1 shows the processes of removing artifacts from EEG
(t) ∑ (t) (t) (2)
59 1 recordings by NA-FMEMD-CCA. Firstly, NA-FMEMD
60 And sub-bands can be expressed as: converts the few-channel contaminated EEG to the
61 (t) (t) (3) multidimensional sub-bands (as described in Section II-D).
62 These sub-bands are called IMFs. Secondly, these IMFs are
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2 calculated by CCA to get the potential estimation where ̂ and ̂ are mean values of EEG in each channel,
3 sources ̂ (t) and the un-mixing matrix W (as described in w and wf are the weight vectors. CCA seeks w and w to
4 Section II-E). Thirdly, the artifacts-related sources are found by
5 maximize the correlation ρ between the first pair of classical
thresholds and set to zero (as described in Section II-F). canonical variates e and as following:
6
Fourthly, the IMFs without artifacts are calculated by wTC fwTf
7
8 multiplying the inverse of the un-mixing matrix -1 and the ρ (10)
√w T C w w T
f Cff wf
9 estimated sources. Finally, artifact-free EEG can be
10 reconstructed by summing up the IMFs without artifacts (the where C and Cff are the auto-covariance matrices
11 last two parts are described in Section II-G). of (t) and (t) . C is the cross-covariance matrix
12 D. Calculating Multidimensional Sub-bands by NA-FMEMD of (t) and (t). Then the maximum of ρ can be calculated by
13 setting the derivatives of equation 6 to zero with respect
NA-FMEMD is a new fast adaptive noise assisted
14 to w and wf as follows:
15 multidimensional sub-bands technology. For the N-channels of
EEG recordings, (t) [ 1 (t), , (t)]T , can be decomposed C-1 C f C-1 T 2
ff Cf w = ρ w
16 -1 -1 T 2
(11)
17 by NA-FMEMD as follows: C Cf C C f w f = ρ w f
18 1) Generate K-channel uncorrelated Gaussian white noises as The following pairs of canonical variates are calculated by a
19 assisted noises, denoted by (t) [ 1 (t), , (t)]. K can similar way. This process is repeated until canonical variates
20 be any positive integer, usually set to be 5. are not found. Then a weight matrix [we ,we , ,we ]
21 2) Add the assisted noises in step 1) to (t), then form a N+K can be obtained, where w is the weight vector corresponding
22 composite signal as an input signal, denoted the t canonical variety e. The weight matrix can be used to
23 by (t) [ 1 (t), , (t), 1 (t), , k (t)]. separate signals into estimated sources.
24
25 3) Calculate the t projection (t) of (t) along direction
F. Artifact-related Sources Removal by Thresholds
26 vector (t) , for all j
Threshold selection is a common issue in removing artifacts
27 ( (t) [ 1 , 2 , , ], 1, 2, , ). from EEG. At present, most articles set thresholds based on
28 4) Extract the first univariate sub-band (t) of the projected some features, such as auto-correlation coefficients, entropy,
29 function (t) for all using the standard EMD. and kurtosis [22]-[26]. When the characteristic values of
30
31 5) Combine all sub-bands (t) with their corresponding components exceed the thresholds, the components are
1
32 regarded as artifacts and removed.
direction vectors (t) 1
, the (N+K)-channel As described in Section II-B, eye-blink artifacts have high
33
34 multidimensional sub-bands, denoted as (t), can be autocorrelations, muscle artifacts and white noises have low
35 obtained by solving the following overdetermined autocorrelations. Hence, two thresholds (T1, T2) of
36 equations (the initial value of is auto-correlation coefficients for removing eye blinks and
37 1), (t) (t) (t) . removing muscle artifacts and white noises can be estimated. In
38 1 1
order to achieve the best effectiveness of each method, we use
39 6) Calculate the slower mean (t) (t) - (t). optimization method (finding the minimum of relative root
40 7) If (t) becomes a monotonic function or does not contain mean squared error, relative root mean squared error is
41 enough extrema to form meaningful multivariate defined in Section III-B) to find the corresponding artifacts
42 envelopes, stop the iterative process and obtain the final removal thresholds based on simulated data firstly. Then, the
43 sub-bands. Otherwise, update the current input average thresholds of removing artifacts in the simulation
44 as (t) (t) and g g 1, then go to step 2). experiments are set as the thresholds to remove the
45
8) Obtain G sets of (N+K)-channel (t) finally and artifact-related sources in the real data. They can be expressed
46
47 discard sub-bands corresponding to the assisted by
noises. The final input signals can be expressed as: n
48
49 (t) ∑ 1 (t) (t) (8) T 1
i

50 In general, the N-channel EEG can be convert to the Treal1  i 1

n
51 sub-bands denoted as (t). n
(12)
52
E. Estimation of Source Components by CCA  T2i
53 Treal 2  i 1
54 We use CCA to estimate the source components of these n
55 multidimensional sub-bands (t) . Here we use (t) for where T1i and T2i are the two thresholds in repeated ith
56 (t) for convenience. Let (t) be a temporally delayed
experiment with simulated data, n represents the total number
57 version of all sub-bands (t). The linear combinations of the
of experiments with simulated data. eal is the threshold for
58 components in (t) and (t) can be written as:
removing eye-blink artifacts from real EEG. eal is the
59 e wT ( - ̂ )
60 (9) threshold for removing muscle artifacts and white noises. And
wTf ( - ̂ ) artifacts-related sources are set to zero.
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2 G. Obtaining Artifact-free EEG by Inverse CCA and
3 Reconstruction
4
5 The remaining EEG-related sources are back-projected to the
6 set of artifact-free multidimensional IMFs by multiplying the
7 inverse of the un-mixing matrix -1 . Then, artifact-free EEG
8 can be reconstructed by summing up the multidimensional
9 IMFs corresponding to the same channel.
10
11 III. EXPERIMENT RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
12
13 In this section, we describe the process of obtaining
semi-simulated EEG and real EEG in public dataset firstly. Fig. 2. One-channel example of signals. (a) Ground truth EEG; (b) Muscle;
14 (c) Eye blink; (d) White noise.
15 Secondly, we introduce the performance metrics utilized in this
16 work. Thirdly, we outline the comparison methods. Fourthly, ( ) as an input of muscle artifacts. It’s worth noting that
17 we clarify the parameters involved in the experiment. At last, each column of C must contain 5 to 8 non-zero entries to insure
18 we show and discuss the experimental results. sufficient spatial structure [26].
19 A. Datasets (b) Eye blink: Model 2-s eye blinks samples using random
20 noise band-pass filtered between 1 and 3 Hz. The generation of
1) Semi-simulated EEG
21 eye blinks time series was also random. Because of affecting
The semi-simulated EEG is composed of the ground truth
22 EEG in the frontal area mainly, the eye blinks are added with
23 EEG ( ) and four types of simulated artifacts ( f ). It
can be written as: high gains at Fp1 and Fp2 electrodes and with low gains at the
24
= (13) rest electrodes [23].
25 f
26 (c) White noise: Model 2-s white noises using unfiltered
where represents the contribution of artifacts. And the
27 random Gaussian noises. The white noises are added to
relationship between and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is as
28 channels randomly of each sample [23].
follows:
29 2) Real EEG in Public Dataset
RMS( )
30 S R (14) The real EEG, containing eye blinks, muscle artifacts, and
RMS( f )
31 white noises, are downloaded from [36]. The electrodes are Fp1,
1 Fp2, C3, C4, O1, O2 corresponding to the International 10-20
32 where RMS( ) √ ∑ 1
T (N is the number of EEG
33 system. The sampling rate is 256 Hz.
34 channels, T is the time samples, is the t channel signal 3) Data Selection
35 of ). According to Equation 14, the corresponding can be For the semi-simulated EEG, 3-6 channels are selected from
36 calculated by setting different SNRs. Then semi-simulated Fp1, Fp2, C3, C4, T7, T8, O1, and O2. These electrodes are
37 EEG with different SNRs can be obtained by Equation 13. often used [18], [21]. It’s worth noting that eye blinks generate
38 The 19-channel EEG recordings of ten health subjects are from the frontal area (Fp1, Fp2) mainly. So, these selected
39 collected in Children Hospital of Fudan University with channels need to contain one of the channels of Fp1 and Fp2 at
40 Nicolet One system. To avoid possible artifacts, subjects least. And the choice of the length of simulated data is 2s,
41
were instructed to sit relaxed in a comfortable way. And the which is commonly used in EEG analysis [6], [8].
42
2-s resting EEG recordings of each subject with almost no Since different SNRs affect the performance of rejecting
43
44 artifacts are picked out carefully by experts as . The artifacts, the 10 ground truth EEG recordings and four types of
45 recording electrodes are located at Fp1, Fp2, F3, Fz, F4, F7, F8, simulated artifacts are mixed with SNRs ranging from 0.5 to
46 C3, Cz, C4, T7, T8, P7, P8, P3, Pz, P4, O1, O2 according to the 4.5 (step 0.5). Each sample of ground truth EEG is mixed with
47 International 10-20 system, with average reference being used artifacts of each type ten times with different SNRs. Then 100
48 as a common ground. Electrode impedances are kept below 5 semi-simulated samples are formed.
49 kΩ. And the data are sampled at 500Hz. Written consent For the real EEG in public dataset, considering that humans
50 approved by the ethics committee was obtained from subjects. blink at a frequency, we select a 2-s EEG segment containing
51 There are four forms of f , namely muscle artifacts eye-blink artifacts obviously and a 2-s EEG segment without
52 ( ), eye-blink artifacts ( ), white noises ( ) noticeable eye-blink artifacts respectively in one subject for
53 methods verification.
54 and mixed artifacts ( ). Corresponding
55 to the electrodes location, we simulated muscles, eye blinks and B. Performance Metrics
56 white noises. One-channel example is shown in Fig.2 and the There are three goals for removing artifacts from EEG
57 specific steps are as follows: recordings. Firstly, reject artifacts better. Secondly, restore
58 (a) Muscle: Model muscle artifacts using random noise more useful brain activities. Thirdly, take less time to achieve
59 band-pass filtered between 20 and 100 Hz. Generate a the first two goals.
60 19-channel muscle source ( ) lasting 2s including 1) Semi-simulated EEG
61 continuous and transient ones firstly, and then multiply a mixing For the semi-simulated EEG, relative root mean squared
62 matrix C (19*19) with to obtain a muscle activity
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2 error (RRMSE) and average correlation coefficient (ACC) can D. Parameter Settings
3 be utilized to evaluate the first two goals and calculate average
4 1) General parameter settings
computational time (ACT) of running an approach to evaluate In CCA, the normalization parameter is set to be 0.0001 as
5
the third goal. usual. In our method, the number of IMFs decomposed by
6
7 (a) RRMSE NA-FMEMD is set to 6. The number of noise-assisted channels
8 The RRMSE is defined as: is set to 5. In VMD, the number of IMFs is also set to 6. The
9 RMS( - ) balancing parameter α is chosen 10000, which is a compromise
RRMSE (15)
10 RMS( ) to extract sub-bands with strong robustness and clear center
11 where is the ground truth EEG, is the frequency. In EEMD, the number of decomposed sub-bands
12 reconstructed artifact-free EEG. The lower the RRMSE is the (IMFs) is satisfied e (l ( ))-1, where is a
13 better the effectiveness of denoising is. rounding function, n is the number of data points [35].
14 (b) ACC Ensemble number (EN) is a key parameter of EEMD. The
15 For the ground truth EEG ( ) and reconstructed EEG computational time of EEMD is high in case of large EN. And
16 ( ), ACC can be defined as follows:
17 the influence of assisted noises on the EEG is greatly reduced.
T
18 1 The computational time of EEMD-CCA must be shorter than
ACC ∑ 1√ (16)
19 T T EEMD-ICA with the same EN because CCA is based on
20 second-order statistics and ICA is based on high-order statistics.
The ACC can reflect the capability of preserving clean brain ACT of EEMD-ICA is unimportant to analyze the performance
21
activities. The higher the ACC is the better the ability of
22 for removing artifacts. Hence, for the EEMD-ICA, the value of
restoring useful brain activities is. EN is set 100. For the EEMD-CCA, we set the value of EN
23
24 (c) ACT
from qualitative and quantitative perspectives. Qualitatively,
25 In this study, we calculate ACT of all samples to reflect the
EN is set to 100 to reduce the influence of assisted noises.
26 average running time of an approach.
Quantitatively, EN is set to 5 to make the computational time of
27 2) Real EEG in public dataset
EEMD-CCA close to that of NA-FMEMD-CCA. When EN is
28 For the real EEG in public dataset, we cannot get prior
equal to 5, EEMD-CCA is expressed as EEMD(5)-CCA in the
29 knowledge (ground truth EEG). RRMSE and ACC cannot be
results.
30 calculated anymore. Because of having different frequency
2) Artifact removal thresholds settings
31 bands, EEG and artifacts can be distinguished by power
As described in Section II-F, optimization method (finding
32 spectral density (PSD) values. Hence, to evaluate the
the minimum of RRMSE) is used to remove artifacts from
33 performance of removing artifacts, we further use the Welch’s
simulated data [21], and two thresholds (T1, T2) of
34 method to calculate the change in signal power (ΔPSD) across
35 auto-correlation coefficients can be estimated.
delta (0.5–4 Hz), theta (4–8 Hz), alpha (8–12 Hz), and beta
36 For the real EEG in public dataset, we cannot calculate
(13–30 Hz) bands corresponding to brain rhythms [37]-[39].
37 RRMSE without ground truth EEG. Therefore, the average
ΔPSDs of different frequency bands are denoted as ΔPSDδ ,
38 thresholds of removing artifacts in the simulation experiments
ΔPSDθ , ΔPSDα , and ΔPSDβ respectively. For the ΔPSD
39 are set as the thresholds to remove the artifact components in
40 outside of artifacts’ frequency bands, lower values correspond the real data.
41 to lower distortion introduced in the underlying cerebral
42 activity by the algorithm used for artifact suppression. Higher E. Results and Discussion
43 ΔPSD values at artifacts’ frequency bands correspond to 1) Artifacts removal of simulated data
44 removing more artifacts. The metric of computational time for We apply six methods (CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA,
45 removing artifacts from real data is the same as simulated data. EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA) to the
46 semi-simulated EEG with artifacts of four types described as
47 C. Comparison Methods
Section III-A. The results are divided into 4 groups for each
48 We compare the results of our method with CCA, type of artifact according to the number of channels (3-6). Fig.
49 EEMD-ICA, EEMD-CCA, and VMD-CCA for removing 3 - Fig. 10 depict the average and standard deviation of RRMSE
50 artifacts in semi-simulated EEG and real EEG of public dataset. and ACC with 100 trials for each group corresponding to
51 In EEMD-ICA, EEMD-CCA, and VMD-CCA method, EEG different SNRs. In these figures, the histograms with different
52 recordings of each channel are decomposed into a series of
colors represent the mean values of each evaluation index after
53 sub-bands by EEMD or VMD firstly. The sub-bands with
artifacts removal by different methods. And the error bar on
54 artifacts are selected automatically. Then ICA or CCA is
applied on these sub-bands to calculate estimated sources and each histogram represents the standard deviation of each
55
56 un-mixing matrix. Finally, (t) can be obtained by evaluation metrics.
57 setting artifact-related estimated sources to zero, Because the number of channels affects the computational
58 and (t) can be got by summing up (t) and time of each method mainly, the ACT of each group, shown
59 residues [23]-[25].To estimate all source components as far as as Table I, are the average with standard deviation of 900
60 possible, we calculate all sub-bands obtained by EEMD or trials (100 trials with each SNR). The Matlab codes for each
61 VMD as the input of ICA or CCA. approach run on the same computer with Intel(R) Core(TM)
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Fig. 3. RRMSE comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing muscle artifacts from 2-s
29 contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
30 between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
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53 Fig. 4. ACC comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing muscle artifacts from 2-s
54 contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
55 between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
56 i5-6402P CPU @2.80GHz and 8.00-GB RAM under different methods and their corresponding contaminated EEG
57 Microsoft Windows 64-bit operating system. and ground truth EEG when SNR value is 2.
58 (a) Muscle artifacts removal:
As well, the Wilcoxon rank sum test is used for statistical
59 Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show the performances for removing
analysis of evaluation metrics.
60
At last, Fig. 11 shows an example of one-channel waveforms muscles from 2-s EEG recording with different SNRs in 3-6
61
62 after removing artifacts in 2-s 3-channel contaminated EEG by channels. Table I shows the ACT of different methods for
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29 Fig. 5. RRMSE comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing eye-blink artifacts from 2-s
contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
30 between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
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52 Fig. 6. ACC comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing eye-blink artifacts from 2-s
53 contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
54 between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
55 removing muscles. Fig. 11a shows an example of one-channel method with other methods, we can find that the performance
56 waveforms after removing muscles in 2-s 3-channel of NA-FMEMD-CCA is significantly better than CCA and
57
contaminated EEG by different methods and their EEMD-ICA in removing muscle artifacts from short-term
58
corresponding contaminated EEG and ground truth EEG when few-channel EEG. In CCA, the number of EEG channels is few,
59
60 SNR value is 2. far less than the latent sources. Furthermore, CCA cannot
61 The lower the RRMSE and the higher the ACC, the better separate the artifact-related components sufficiently. In
62 effectiveness of artifact removal. Comparing the proposed EEMD-ICA, ICA may not perform effectively in removing
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29 Fig. 7. RRMSE comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing white noises from 2-s
contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
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between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
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54 Fig. 8. ACC comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing white noises from 2-s contaminated
55 EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05 between
56 NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
57 artifacts with non-stereotyped scalp topographies, such as method. This difference is particularly significant when SNR
58 muscles. increases or the number of channels increases. That is because
59 We also find that the ACT of EEMD(5)-CCA is similar to EEMD destroys the original EEG by adding assisted noises to
60 our method when removing muscle artifacts from 3-channel the original signal directly. In order to reduce the influence of
61 EEG, but the effectiveness of EEMD(5)-CCA is worse than our the assisted noises on the original EEG, the resulting sub-bands
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29 Fig. 9. RRMSE comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing mixed artifacts from 2-s
contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
30 between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
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54 Fig. 10. ACC comparison of 3-6 channels with different SNRs (x axis, in the range of SNR from 0.5 to 4.5, step 0.5) for removing mixed artifacts from 2-s
contaminated EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. An asterisk indicates significance at p < 0.05
55
between NA-FMEMD-CCA and other methods, and ns indicates no significance.
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57 decomposed by EEMD is ensemble mean values of sub-bands effectiveness of EEMD-CCA. However, the ACT of our
58 decomposed by EMD in many trials. In EEMD(5)-CCA, EN is proposed method is much smaller than that of EEMD-CCA.
59 set to 5, which is too small to eliminate the influence. When EN Hence, our method can remove muscle artifacts well in a
60 is set to 100 in EEMD-CCA, the performance becomes better. shorter time.
61 However, the computational time becomes longer. In addition, EEMD can only decompose EEG signals
62 Consequently, the effectiveness of our method is similar to the channel by channel, which makes its computational time
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2 TABLE I
3 RESULTS OF THE ATC TAKEN BY CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD-CCA, EEMD(5)-CCA, VMD-CCA, AND NA-FMEMD-CCA FOR REMOVING ARTIFACTS FROM 2-S
4 CONTAMINATED EEG (MEAN ±STD)
5 EEMD(5)-CCA NA-FMEMD-C
Artifact form Channels CCA(s) EEMD-ICA(s) EEMD-CCA(s) VMD-CCA(s)
(s) CA(s)
6
3 0.0011±0.0012 15.5466±0.4500 14.9112±0.3782 0.8001±0.0269 4.6628±1.0807 0.7941±0.1145
7 4 0.0008±0.0007 20.5632±0.3610 19.5901±0.2450 1.0936±0.0314 6.3066±1.2671 0.7491±0.1050
8 Muscle
5 0.0008±0.0007 26.2027±0.4177 25.0239±0.3191 1.3813±0.0510 7.5384±1.5543 0.7492±0.0997
9 6 0.0009±0.0008 31.1143±0.5914 29.6033±0.5382 1.6343±0.0503 9.1073±1.7036 0.7161±0.0948
10 3 0.0009±0.0006 15.5732±0.2538 14.8606±0.1230 0.7879±0.0190 4.7936±1.1501 0.9305±0.0407
11 4 0.0011±0.0011 21.0547±0.8003 19.9202±0.6935 1.0673±0.0325 5.9375±1.4002 0.9435±0.0469
Eye blink
5 0.0008±0.0005 26.6075±0.6817 25.0239±0.6341 1.3155±0.0323 7.5020±1.8139 0.9722±0.0561
12
6 0.0008±0.0006 31.9472±0.9631 30.2672±0.8958 1.5681±0.0315 9.5149±1.8806 0.9842±0.0550
13 3 0.0017±0.0059 16.5222±0.3690 15.7275±0.2216 0.8037±0.0309 4.7085±1.0933 0.8426±0.0548
14 4 0.0011±0.0018 22.3221±0.4585 21.3304±0.2959 1.0727±0.0385 5.9110±1.3171 0.8553±0.0566
White noise
15 5 0.0009±0.0006 28.1518±0.8128 26.8955±0.6399 1.3783±0.0581 7.5702±1.4179 0.8629±0.0555
16 6 0.0016±0.0015 34.1205±0.8968 32.1482±0.9665 1.6522±0.0575 9.4094±1.7343 0.8751±0.0608
3 0.0012±0.0007 15.6990±0.3387 15.0538±0.2438 0.8295±0.0530 4.6754±1.1184 0.8463±0.0442
17 4 0.0010±0.0007 21.6639±0.5358 20.1960±0.3040 1.1000±0.0539 5.9655±1.3943 0.8430±0.0511
18 Mixed artifacts
5 0.0015±0.0014 27.2841±0.3563 25.5248±0.3813 1.3958±0.0542 7.6723±1.8732 0.8675±0.0631
19 6 0.0018±0.0014 33.0971±1.1646 31.2125±0.9488 1.6998±0.1128 9.9885±1.8681 0.8772±0.0550
20 The ACT of A-FMEMD-CCA is significantly different from other methods (p<0.05), except that the ACT of removing artifacts from 3-channel EEG by
21 EEMD(5)-CCA.
22
23
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26
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28
29
30
31
32
33 (a) Muscle artifacts (b) Eye-blink artifacts (c) White noises (d) Mixed artifacts
Fig. 11. An example of 1.5-s one-channel waveforms after removing artifacts in 2-s, 3-channel contaminated EEG at SNR=2 by different methods and their
34 corresponding contaminated EEG and ground truth EEG. The first channel is the contaminated EEG. The second to seventh channels are the corrected EEG by
35 CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA respectively. The last channel is the ground truth EEG.
36
37 increase with the increase of the number of channels. VMD is ACC. There is no significant difference of effectiveness
38 also a one-dimensional sub-bands decomposition technology. between VMD-CCA and NA-FMEMD-CCA in most cases in
39 Hence, although the effectiveness of VMD-CCA is slightly removing eye-blink artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG.
40 better than our method sometimes, its computational time is However the former has poor robustness with larger standard
41 always longer and increases with the increase of the number of deviations when SNR is small, and costs a longer
42 channels. Hence, our method can remove muscles effectively computational time than our method.
43 and efficiently. Fig. 11b shows an example of one-channel waveforms after
44 (b) Eye-blink artifacts removal: removing eye-blink artifacts in 2-s, 3-channel contaminated
45 Fig. 5, Fig. 6, and Table I show the results of removing EEG at SNR = 2 by different methods and their corresponding
46 eye-blink artifacts from short-term contaminated EEG in 3-6 contaminated EEG and ground truth EEG. Compared with the
47 channels by different methods. contaminated EEG and ground truth EEG, we can see that CCA
48 We can observe that CCA can remove eye-blink artifacts loses much brain activity information while removing
49 better than EEMD-ICA and EEMD(5)-CCA based on lower eye-blink artifacts. There are still containing artifacts in
50 RRMSE and higher ACC when SNR is small. However, the corrected EEG by EEMD-ICA. Moreover, compared with
51
performance of CCA becomes weaker with the increase of EEMD(5)-CCA, EEMD-CCA, and VMD-CCA, the waveform
52
53 SNRs. It means that CCA cannot permanently remove of corrected EEG by NA-FMEMD-CCA is more similar to
54 eye-blink artifacts well in short-term few-channel EEG. ground truth EEG (as shown in the blue dashed box).
55 We can also find that EEMD-ICA cannot remove eye-blinks In short, NA-FMEMD-CCA, as a multidimensional
56 from short-term few-channel EEG effectively because ICA sub-bands method, can effectively remove eye-blinks from 2-s
57 cannot get meaningful results with insufficient data. Moreover, few-channel EEG. Moreover, its computational time is short.
58 the ACT of NA-FMEMD-CCA and EEMD(5)-CCA are similar, (c) White noises removal:
59 but the former performs better than the latter significantly with Fig.7 and Fig.8 show the performance of removing white
60 p < 0.05. Even if the EN in EEMD is increased, the noises from 2-s EEG recordings with different SNRs in 3-6
61 performance of NA-FMEMD-CCA is still better than channels. Table I shows ACT with the mean values and
62 EEMD-CCA in most cases with lower RRMSE and higher
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2 standard deviations of these methods for removing white
3 noises.
4
We can find that RRMSE and ACC of different methods for
5
removing white noises are similar to muscles removal. That is
6
7 because muscles and white noises have similar characteristics.
8 The performance of NA-FMEMD-CCA is similar to that of
9 EEMD-CCA with no significance in most cases, but its
10 computational time is far less than that of EEMD-CCA. The
11 computational time of NA-FMEMD-CCA is close to that of
12 EEMD(5)-CCA, but NA-FMEMD-CCA outperforms
13 EEMD(5)-CCA with lower RRMSE and higher ACC.
Fig. 12. Waveforms of Segment1 and Segment2 selected from real EEG in
14 Moreover, although the effectiveness of VMD-CCA in public dataset.
15 removing white noises is slightly better than TABLE II
16 NA-FMEMD-CCA, its running time is much longer. When the THRESHOLDS FOR REMOVING ARTIFACTS FROM 2-S 6-CHANNEL REAL EEG IN
17 PUBLIC DATASET
number of channels increases to 6, VMD-CCA’s ACT is 10
18 NA-FM
times longer than that of NA-FMEMD-CCA. Threshold CCA
EEMD EEMD- VMD-C
EMD-C
19 Fig. 11c shows an example of one-channel waveforms after -ICA CCA CA
CA
20 removing white noises in 2s, 3-channel contaminated EEG Treal1 0.9215 0.9893 0.9990 0.9978 0.9975
21 Treal2 0.7254 0.3357 0.7052 0.8047 0.7685
using different methods, and corresponding contaminated EEG
22
and ground truth EEG. Similar to the results of removing And the RRMSE and ACC of VMD-CCA are also closed to
23
24 muscles from EEG recordings, CCA cannot remove white that of our method with longer ACT. The robustness of
25 noises. And there are still white noises in the corrected EEG by VMD-CCA is worse than our method with larger standard
26 EEMD-ICA. Some useful information is lost in contaminated deviations of RRMSE and ACC. In general,
27 EEG after removing white noises by EEMD(5)-CCA and NA-FMEMD-CCA is an effective and efficient method to
28 EEMD-CCA compared with ground truth EEG (as shown in the remove mixed artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG.
29 blue dashed box). Fig. 11d shows an example of one-channel waveforms after
30 The results suggest that NA-FMEMD-CCA can effectively removing mixed artifacts in 2s, 3-channel contaminated EEG
31 remove white noises with less computational cost than the other using different methods, and corresponding contaminated EEG
32 methods. and ground truth EEG. We can see that there are still some
33 (d) Mixed artifacts removal: artifacts in corrected EEG by CCA and EEMD-ICA. With the
34 From the above results, we can see that different methods limitation of ensemble number, the corrected EEG by
35 remove different artifacts with different performances. EEMD(5)-CCA is still affected by assisted noises. Compared
36 Furthermore, we remove mixed artifacts contained muscle with EEMD-CCA and VMD-CCA, the waveform of corrected
37
artifacts, eye-blink artifacts, and white noises simultaneously EEG by NA-FMEMD-CCA is more similar to ground truth
38
by our method according to different thresholds of EEG (as shown in the blue dashed box).
39
40 autocorrelation coefficient. The results of removing mixed 2) Artifacts removal of real EEG
41 artifacts are as follows. Six channels and two 2-s segments of real EEG in public
42 Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 show the denoising results of 2-s EEG dataset were selected to examine our method’s performance
43 recordings contained mixed artifacts with different SNRs in 3-6 further. Waveforms of Segment1 and Segment2 are shown in
44 channels. And Table I shows the ACT of these methods for Fig. 12. Thresholds of removing artifacts are shown in Table II.
45 removing mixed artifacts. These thresholds are the average thresholds of removing mixed
46 We can find that RRMSE values of CCA and EEMD-ICA artifacts from 6-channel simulated data. The components with
47 are higher and the ACC values are lower than other methods the autocorrelation over the threshold eal are regarded as eye
48 significantly. That is because CCA cannot separate sources blinks and below the threshold eal are regarded as muscle
49 effectively when the number of EEG channels is less than the artifacts and white noises. Fig. 13 and Fig. 14 show
50 number of sources in brain. And EEMD-ICA has a weak ability comparative PSD plots of each channel of Segment1 and
51 in removing artifacts with non-stereotyped scalp topographies. Segment2 respectively. And the results of ΔPSDs of different
52 The number of EEG channels and the value of EN are two brain rhythms are shown in Table III and Table IV. The real
53 EEG and the corrected EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA,
critical factors affecting the computational time of EEMD.
54
When the ACT of EEMD-CCA are close to that of EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA are plotted
55
NA-FMEMD-CCA, the performance of NA-FMEMD-CCA in in Fig. 15 and Fig. 16.
56
57 removing mixed artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG is It should be noted that we have not analyzed the performance
58 better than that of EEMD-CCA. That is because the assisted of EEMD(5)-CCA method in removing artifacts. We have
59 noises in sub-bands cannot be completely eliminated with small proved above that although the computational time of
60 EN. When the EN is increased, the performance of EEMD(5)-CCA is close to that of NA-FMEMD-CCA, it cannot
61 EEMD-CCA is close to NA-FMEMD-CCA. However, the completely eliminate the influence of assisted noises on the
62 ACT of EEMD-CCA become longer than NA-FMEMD-CCA. original EEG, thus destroying the signal completeness. The
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23 Fig. 13. PSD of Segment1 and corrected EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA, Fig. 14. PSD of Segment2 and corrected EEG by CCA, EEMD-ICA,
EEMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA. EEMD-CCA, and NA-FMEMD-CCA.
24
25 TABLE III
COMPARATIVE ARTIFACTS SUPPRESSION PERFORMANCE IN SEGMENT1 USING ΔPSD AMONG DIFFERENT METHODS
26
27 Method Fp1 Fp2 C3 C4 O1 O2 Mean±Std
ΔPSDδ 18.3638 17.8535 5.0544 11.6825 2.2081 9.1487 10.7185±6.5918
28 ΔPSDθ 15.7488 16.2916 2.4451 8.7635 0.6605 3.8784 7.9646±6.7983
29 CCA
ΔPSDα 13.0075 14.2658 1.7970 8.8118 1.5858 8.1346 7.9337±5.3778
30 ΔPSDβ 16.0223 19.4679 2.3120 9.7443 2.1876 6.7731 9.4179±7.1343
31 ΔPSDδ 11.1163 16.1551 16.6590 17.3693 15.3892 11.9530 14.7736±2.6043
32 ΔPSDθ 0.1577 0.5980 0.6044 1.3848 0.8741 1.0146 0.7722±0.4197
EEMD-ICA
33 ΔPSDα 1.0671 1.0101 0.8002 1.0876 0.7915 1.1009 0.9763±0.1431
34 ΔPSDβ 7.8106 3.4675 1.3592 1.9011 2.8981 4.1230 3.5932±2.2987
35 ΔPSDδ 6.0453 6.8511 8.7383 9.2067 7.9832 7.9701 7.7991±1.1748
ΔPSDθ 1.3026 1.0326 2.3161 2.1182 0.9839 2.7244 1.7463±0.7358
36 EEMD-CCA
ΔPSDα 0.5392 1.2246 0.2247 0.3574 0.7945 0.3985 0.5898±0.3644
37 ΔPSDβ 8.0153 4.5810 7.2916 7.6967 6.9831 6.4376 6.8342±1.2333
38 ΔPSDδ 21.4392 20.0463 26.0936 33.7034 25.4813 28.6216 25.8976±4.9533
39 ΔPSDθ 4.8044 5.3073 8.5881 17.5396 7.0436 10.1222 8.9009±4.6768
VMD-CCA
40 ΔPSDα 2.9449 5.2343 4.0424 6.4129 3.7610 5.0035 4.5665±1.2328
41 ΔPSDβ 11.3480 9.4963 10.3259 8.6723 7.3362 6.8038 8.9971±1.7445
ΔPSDδ 6.7836 6.5007 7.0039 7.5109 11.0492 17.6535 9.4170 ±4.3680
42
ΔPSDθ 0.3470 0.4531 0.9644 0.6730 1.3114 2.6385 1.0646±0.8474
43 NA-FMEMD-CCA
ΔPSDα 1.1954 1.2220 0.9855 0.6607 0.8465 0.4494 0.8932±0.3037
44 ΔPSDβ 13.8701 9.2393 10.4639 9.7172 8.9750 5.3452 9.6018±2.7429
45
46 PSD of corrected EEG by EEMD(5)-CCA varied. Therefore, it artifacts in high frequency with lower ΔPSD .
47 is not necessary to analyze EEMD(5)-CCA in real EEG in For Segment2, the results of performance are shown in Fig.
48 public dataset. 14 and Table IV. We can see that our method can remove eye
49 As shown in the dashed boxes in Fig. 15, although there are blinks in δ rhythm and muscle artifacts in rhythm while
50
51
no obvious eye blinks in Segment1, it contains artifacts like retaining brain activity under θ and α rhythm with higher
eye-blinks. Hence, for Segment1, the mean ΔPSDδ of ΔPSDδ , higher ΔPSD , lower ΔPSDθ , and lower ΔPSDα .
52
53 VMD-CCA is the largest shown in Table III, which means the Fig. 15 and Fig. 16 show the waveforms before and after
54 best effectiveness of removing artifacts like to eye-blinks. removing artifacts by different methods. We can see that the
55 However, the values of ΔPSDθ and ΔPSDα are also large, results are consistent with the above discussion.
56 which means EEG-related components losing. The results of Table V shows the mean ACT of removing artifacts from
57 CCA are similar to VMD-CCA in Segment1. Although the Segment1 and Segment2. We can find that our method is not
58 performance of VMD-CCA in the simulated experiment is only removing artifacts effectively, but also taking very short
59 good, it is poor in real experiment, which confirms that the computational time.
60 robustness of VMD-CCA is poor. Moreover, our method Above all, CCA cannot remove artifacts well because of the
61 outperforms EEMD-ICA and EEMD-CCA for removing limitation of the number of channels. EEMD, VMD, and
62
63
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 > TIM-21-02113 < 14
1
2 TABLE IV
3 COMPARATIVE ARTIFACTS SUPPRESSION PERFORMANCE IN SEGMENT2 USING ΔPSD AMONG DIFFERENT METHODS
4 Method Fp1 Fp2 C3 C4 O1 O2 Mean±Std
5 ΔPSDδ 26.1160 30.3928 13.2833 16.2930 9.2111 8.9956 17.3820±8.9515
6 ΔPSDθ 14.2892 18.8101 4.1568 6.2790 3.0939 2.6135 8.2071±6.7375
CCA
7 ΔPSDα 6.4225 11.2058 0.5230 1.3171 1.3368 0.9100 3.6192±4.3093
8 ΔPSDβ 4.0590 11.2492 1.1488 5.6734 2.4942 3.1378 4.6271±3.5815
9 ΔPSDδ 14.1563 14.2536 11.4629 9.5232 12.0190 14.9354 12.7251±2.0791
ΔPSDθ 2.0281 2.0643 0.7160 0.4461 0.6739 1.0686 1.1662±0.7103
10 EEMD-ICA
ΔPSDα 6.6756 6.3211 1.8918 1.7319 0.6897 1.2610 3.0952±2.6715
11 ΔPSDβ 12.4188 9.8514 2.8361 1.3002 1.3321 1.9552 4.9489±4.8919
12 ΔPSDδ 8.8738 8.1960 7.4385 7.4417 7.1083 7.0434 7.6836±0.7125
13 ΔPSDθ 2.7312 2.7552 2.7233 2.4629 3.9772 3.7644 3.0690±0.6337
EEMD-CCA
14 ΔPSDα 0.9558 1.3770 1.9705 2.9338 0.3755 0.3464 1.3265±1.0003
15 ΔPSDβ 7.9042 11.2716 10.8988 11.1493 7.7212 7.7212 9.1099±2.3214
16 ΔPSDδ 43.0559 46.9583 35.4023 36.2715 30.5030 25.6895 36.3134±7.8261
ΔPSDθ 14.3790 14.0043 11.6414 13.4370 68408 6.5250 11.1379±3.5778
17 VMD-CCA
ΔPSDα 2.2965 3.3737 2.1795 1.8280 0.8772 0.6596 1.8691±0.9991
18 ΔPSDβ 18.3561 12.3961 20.4555 20.3443 14.4715 13.8608 16.6474±3.5117
19 ΔPSDδ 20.5853 20.3143 20.9306 18.3677 19.3425 16.3744 19.3191±1.7186
20 ΔPSDθ 3.2162 3.0223 2.5273 2.9485 3.3476 2.0219 2.8473±0.4921
NA-FMEMD-CCA
21 ΔPSDα 0.5113 1.2427 0.1777 0.6332 0.5013 0.7123 0.6298±0.3514
22 ΔPSDβ 7.5796 12.4487 7.6908 8.5111 6.5242 6.1947 8.1582±2.2632
23
TABLE V
24 RESULTS OF THE MEAN ATC TAKEN BY CCA, EEMD-ICA, EEMD-CCA, AND
25 NA-FMEMD-CCA FOR REMOVING ARTIFACTS FROM 2-S 6-CHANNEL REAL
26 EEG IN PUBLIC DATASET
27 NA-
EEMD- EEMD- VMD-
28 Method CCA(s) FMEMD
ICA(s) CCA(s) CCA(s)
29 -CCA(s)
ACT 0.0396 24.5909 23.3827 8.9173 0.6110
30
31 TABLE VI
32 (a) C3 (b) O1 COMPUTATIONAL COMPLEXITIES FOR SHORT-TERM FEW-CHANNEL EEG
33 Fig. 15. Corrected EEG after artifacts removal by different methods compared ARTIFACTS REMOVAL METHODS
34 with original real EEG at C3 and O1 channels of Segment1. Method Computational complexity
35 L3
EEMD-CCA O(Le d· l )+O 5 LO +5 LO + 9 O
36 3
37 L3O
VMD-CCA O( d· l )+O 5 LO +5 LO + 9
38 3
L3
39 NA-FMEMD-CCA O(d· l )+O 5 LO +5 LO + 9 O
3
40 is data length, d is the dimension of input data, Le is the number of
41 ensembles, LO is the number of observations and is the number of modes.
42
43 The results in semi-simulated EEG and public real EEG
44 (a) C4 (b) O2 suggest that the performance of our method is effective for
45 Fig. 16. Corrected EEG after artifacts removal by different methods compared removing artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG. And it
with original real EEG at C4 and O2 channels of Segment2.
46 takes at least 5 times less ACT compared with state-of-the-art
47 NA-FMEMD, as sub-bands decomposition methods, can methods with similar effectiveness, using the same computer
48 generate more “channels” from few-channel EEG. Hence, and software. Hence, NA-FMEMD-CCA is a superior choice
49 EEMD-ICA, EEMD-CCA, VMD-CCA, and for removing artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG while
50 NA-FMEMD-CCA break the limitation of traditional BSS and preserving brain activities effectively and efficiently.
51 can be applied to remove artifacts in few-channel EEG better. 3) Computational complexity comparison
52 Compared with EEMD-based and VMD-based methods, there The computational complexity of proposed method is also
53 are two advantages of NA-FMEMD-CCA. Firstly, compared with EEMD-CCA and VMD-CCA, shown in Table
54 NA-FMEMD-CCA, as multidimensional sub-bands VI, due to the similar performances of these methods. The
55
technology, can analyze few-channel EEG simultaneously. It difference in computational complexity of these methods is
56
considers inter-channel information. Secondly, NA-FMEMD reflected in sub-bands decomposition technologies.
57
58 decomposes signals by adding additional assisted noise The EEMD first generates an ensemble of data sets by
59 channels. It ensures the completeness of signals and does not adding different realizations of a white noise with finite
60 need many iterations like EEMD to eliminate the influence of amplitude to the original data. Then sub-bands are obtained by
61 assisted noises added on the original signals, which greatly averaging the respective components in each realization over
62 reduces the computational time. the ensemble. The computation complexity of EEMD
63
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 > TIM-21-02113 < 15
1
2 realization will be the sum of the required computations for the (BCI) ,” IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, vol. 8, no. 4,
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4 2014.
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5 ocular artifact suppression from frontal EEG electrodes using VMD,” and 2019, respectively.
6 Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 148-161, He is currently a post-doctor at the
7 Apr. 2019.
School of Information, Yunnan University,
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Shanghai Medical University, in 2010.
16 ac.uk/_mandic/research/BSS_Stuff.htm.
[37] P. Welch, “The use of fast Fourier transform for the estimation of power Since 1999, he has been involving in the
17
spectra: A method based on time averaging over short, modified clinical work of pediatric neurology and
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19 15, no. 2, pp. 70-73, June 1967.
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Empirical Mode Decomposition,” IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 16, no. 18, Fulai An was born in 1996. He received
23 pp. 6947-6954, Sept. 2016.
24 the M.S. degree in Automation from
[39] C. Dora, and P. K. “Biswal, An improved algorithm for efficient ocular
25 artifact suppression from frontal EEG electrodes using VMD,” Harbin University of Science and
26 Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, vol 40, Issue 1, pp. 148-161, Technology, in 2014. He is currently
Mar. 2020. working in Technical Institute of Physics
27 [40] Y. Wang, C. H. Yeh, H. W. Vincent Young, K. Hu, M. T. Lo, “On the
28 and Chemistry, CAS.
computational complexity of the empirical mode decomposition
29 algorithm,” Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, vol. His main research interests include
30 400, pp. 159-167, Apr. 2014. signal processing.
[41] W. Gu, and L. Zhou, “Evaluation on Filter Performance of Variational Yakang Dai is currently a Professor and
31 Mode Decomposition and Its Application in Separating Closely Spaced
32 the Associate Director of the Medical
Modes,” Shock and Vibration, May. 2020.
33 Imaging Department, Suzhou Institute of
34 Siqi Zhang was born in 1996. She Biomedical Engineering and Technology
35 received the B.S. degrees from the Harbin (SIBET), Chinese Academy of Sciences.
36 University of Science and Technology, in His current research interest includes
37 2014, where she is currently pursuing the medical image analysis, such as MRI, CT,
38 Ph.D. degree. PET, and MEG/EEG. He has published
39 Her main research interests include EEG more than 40 articles and 30 China
40 processing, and epilepsy seizure location. innovation patents. In addition, he has developed several open
41 medical image/signal analysis software toolboxes, including
42 Bo You was born in 1962. He received the MITK, 3DMed, eConnectome, iBEAT, and aBEAT.
43 B.Sc. degree from the Harbin Institute of Yan Liu was born in 1984. She received
44 Technology, in 1982, the M.Sc. degree the Ph.D. degree from the Harbin Institute
45 from the Harbin University of Science and of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2013.
46 Technology, in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree From 2010 to 2012, she was a Visiting
47 from the Harbin Institute of Technology, in International Student in information and
48 1995. communication technology with
49 He is currently a professor with the Commonwealth Science and Industrial
50 School of Automation, a doctoral supervisor in the School of Research Organization, Brisbane, QLD,
51 Mechanical and Power Engineering, Harbin University of Australia. She was an Assistant Professor with the Automation
52 Science and Technology. His main research interests include School, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin,
53 intelligent robot and mechatronic control, information from 2013 to 2016. Since 2016, she has been a Postdoctoral
54 processing technology of brain network atlas, EEG/MEG Researcher with the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical
55 processing. Engineering and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
56 Her current research interests include EEG/MEG/MRI
57 processing, and epilepsy seizure prediction and foci
58 localization.
59
60
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Response to Reviewers. Click here to access/download;Response to
Reviewers.;Response to Reviewers.pdf

Response to Reviewers
Dear Editor Shervin Shirmohammadi and Reviewers:

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled
“Efficient Rejection of Artifacts for Short-term Few-channel EEG Based on Fast Adaptive
Multidimensional Sub-bands Blind Source Separation” (ID: TIM-21-02113). Those comments
are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our manuscript. We have
undertaken a significant effort to revise the manuscript including grammar and syntax
checking, mathematical formulations’ readability improving, and addressing all the comments
and suggestions raised by the reviewers. The references are at the end of the letter. We believe
that the manuscript has significantly improved and strengthened because of reviewers’
comments. The revised text in the manuscript is printe d in RED to make it easier to locate. We
have also replied to reviewers’ comments one by one in the following (in BLUE).

Responds to the reviewer’s comments:

Reviewer #1:
1. Response to comment: (The authors have addressed the vast majority of the reviewers'
comments. The results are supported by in-depth experimentation. For all this, I recommend
the acceptance of this article. Final proofreading is recommended.)
Response:
We thank the reviewer for her/his favorable comment. We are glad that the r eviewer is
satisfied.

Reviewer #2:
1. Response to comment: (The paper needs to be thoroughly checked for grammar and
syntax.)
Response:
We thank the reviewer for this comment. We have carefully checked our manuscript and
corrected multiple sentences. We hope this has fixed the typos the reviewer had noticed before.
Especially,
 Page 1: Explain the term 'real data experimental results'
The term 'real data experimental results' represents the results of different methods for
artifact removal on real data. To avoid confusion, we changed ‘Both simulated and real data
experimental results’ in the original manuscript to ‘The results’ in the revised manuscript.
 Page 2: Explain the term 'destroys the completeness of the original EEG'
EEMD decomposes signal by adding Gaussian white noise to the signal. However, residual
noise still presents in the reconstructed EEMD signal. Hence, EEMD destroys the
completeness of the original EEG.
 Page 2: Reconstruct the sentence 'And the true sub -bands decomposed by EEMD …'
 We have revised the sentence ‘And the true sub-bands decomposed by EEMD are ensemble
mean values of sub-bands decomposed by EMD to eliminate the Gaussian white noise, which
increases the computational time.’ as follows:
“ To eliminate Gaussian white noise as much as possible, the resulting sub-bands are obtained by averaging the
results of decomposition over an ensemble of noisy versions of the original EEG. Hence, the computational time of
EEMD is long, and EEMD-based methods cannot remove artifacts efficiently.”
 Page 2: Correct the sentence 'Due to decompose …'
We have revised the sentence ‘Due to decompose few-channel EEG channel by channel,
these methods need to take a long time to remove artifacts, and the time increases with the
number of channels.’ as follows:
“ The computational time is long and increases with the number of channels, because these methods decompose
few-channel EEG channel by channel.”

2. Response to comment: (The writing needs to be made more compact. Even after revision
(following a previous reviewer's comment) the paper ap pears wordy and needs more working
upon.)
Response:
Following the reviewer's comment, we reduced the content of the manuscript from 25 pages
to 16 pages. In this work, we discusses the performance of five kinds of methods for removing
muscles, eye blinks, white noises, and mixed artifacts from short -term few-channel EEG. The
content of the manuscript leads to the length of the manuscript. However, as the reviewer
suggests, the writing needs to be made more compact. Therefore, we checked and adjusted the
expression of multiple sentences. The revised text in the manuscript is printed in red.

3. Response to comment: (The reviewer suggests that the mathematical formulations

described in Section II be placed in boxes to ensure improved readability.)
Response:
We thank the reviewer for this comment. The mathematical formulations described in
Section II have been placed in boxes to ensure improved readability.
“ We assume that N-channel EEG recordings, denoted by X(t) = [x1 (t),…, xN (t)]T , are composed of a linear
mixture of M uncorrelated unknown sources, denoted by S(t) = [s1 (t),…, sM (t)]T , t = 1, 2,…, T, where 1, 2,…, T
are sampling points. Then X(t) can be expressed as:
X(t) = AS(t) (1)
where A is the mixing matrix.
For the few-channel EEG, N is set to 3 to 6 and M > N. Before using BSS techniques, X(t) can be decomposed
into *(N+K) sub-bands and a set of residuals by NA-FMEMD to avoid the underdetermined problem. K
sub-bands are the decomposition products of assisted noises. Remove them directly. The sub-bands corresponding
1 1 N N T
to few-channel EEG can be denoted as (t) = [ 1 (t),…, (t),…, 1 (t),…, (t)] = (t) , g = 1 to
G, n = 1 to N, where g is ID number of (t) of each channel. The residuals can be written as
1 (t),…, t
(t)=[ (t)] , where (t) is a residual of channel EEG. Hence, the relationship between
t
the channel EEG and sub-bands can be described by

x (t) = ∑ (t) + (t) (2)

=1

And sub-bands can be expressed as:

 (t) = BS(t) (3)
where B is the mixing matrix for calculating (t). Since B and S(t) are unknown, BSS techniques can be
utilized to solve this problem. Estimated values of S(t) and an un-mixing matrix can be figured out via the BSS.
For computing S(t), we can follow the step:
Ŝ (t) = W * (t) (4)
where Ŝ (t) is the estimated value of S(t), W is the un-mixing matrix. The autocorrelation coefficients of each
estimated source in Ŝ (t) can be calculated. Due to muscle artifacts and white noises with lower autocorrelation
coefficients and eye-blink artifacts with higher autocorrelation coefficients than brain activities [20], [21], [35],
two thresholds (T1, T2) can be estimated to remove artifacts. Estimated sources with autocorrelation coefficient
greater than T1 in Ŝ (t) are regarded as eye-blink-related sources and lower than T2 are regarded as muscle-related
sources and white-noise-related sources. The Ŝ (t) without artifacts, denoted by Ŝ (t), can be obtained by setting
the artifact-related sources in Ŝ (t) to zero. Then the artifact-free (t), denoted by (t), can be calculated
by
(t) = W-1 Ŝ (t) (5)
Finally, we can obtain corrected EEG by

x (t) = ∑ (t) + (t) (6)

=1
T
X (t) = [x 1 (t),…, x N (t)] (7)
n
where g (t) represents the gt artifact-free sub-band after removing artifacts in the nt channel,
x n (t) is the corrected EEG of nt channel, and X (t) is a matrix of N * T dimension representing
corrected EEG of all channels. The details about the proposed NA-FMEMD-CCA artifacts removal method are
presented as follows.”

4. Response to comment: (The authors may please comment on the rationale behind the
choice of SNR and corresponding lambda in Equation 9.)
Response:
Many studies show that the performance of artifact removal methods is affected by SNR,
and SNR is usually set between 0.5 and 4.5 [1] -[3]. We show an example of one-channel
semi-simulated EEG with different SNRs in Figure. 1. When SNR equals 0.5, ground truth
EEG is combined with artifacts seriously. When SNR equals 4.5, the semi -simulated EEG
contains almost no artifacts. Hence, it is suffic ient to discuss the performance of artifacts
removal methods in this SNR’s range. And the corresponding can be calculated by SNRs,
according to Equation 14 in the revised manuscript.

a)SNR=0.5
 b)SNR=4.5
Figure. 1. An example of one-channel semi-simulated EEG with different SNRs. a)SNR=0.5;
b)SNR=4.5.
We have addressed this in Section III-A as follows:
“Since different SNRs affect the performance of rejecting artifacts, the 10 ground truth EEG recordings and
four types of simulated artifacts are mixed with SNRs ranging from 0.5 to 4.5 (step 0.5). ”

5. Response to comment: (The authors may please include some details about the clinical
conditions of the subjects, if any, and the experiment protocol .)
Response:
We thank the reviewer for this comment. We have added some details about the clinical
conditions of the subjects and the experiment protocol at Section III in revised manuscript.
“ The 19-channel EEG recordings of ten health subjects are collected in Children Hospital of Fudan University
with Nicolet One system. To avoid possible artifacts, subjects were instructed to sit relaxed in a comfortable way.
And the 2-s resting EEG recordings of each subject with almost no artifacts are picked out carefully by experts as
XEEG . The recording electrodes are located at Fp1, Fp2, F3, Fz, F4, F7, F8, C3, Cz, C4, T7, T8, P7, P8, P3, Pz, P4,
O1, O2 according to the International 10-20 system, with average reference being used as a common ground.
Electrode impedances are kept below 5 kΩ. And the data are sampled at 500Hz. Written consent approved by the
ethics committee was obtained from subjects.”

6. Response to comment: (According to the understanding of the reviewer, 'real EEG' refers
to downloaded EEG data from a database and 'simulated EEG' refers to artifact-free intervals
of recorded EEG with simulated artifacts imposed. Such nomenclature is confusing and
authors may consider revising the same.)
Response:
We thank the reviewer for this comment. To avoid confusion, we change 'real EEG' in the
manuscript to 'real EEG in public dataset' and 'simulated EEG' to 'semi -simulated EEG'. The
term of 'semi-simulated EEG' refers to artifact-free intervals of recorded EEG with simulated
artifacts imposed, and 'real EEG in public dataset' refers to downloaded EEG data from a
database.

7. Response to comment: (Page 6: The authors may please explain the rationale behind the
choice of alpha, n and EN.)
Response:
Considering the reviewer’s comment, we explain the choice of alpha, n and EN as follows:
1) Alpha
 Alpha is the balancing parameter for the data fidelity constraint. For lower values of alpha,
it is difficult to accurately extract the noise robust sub -band. However, the value of center
frequencies of sub-bands cannot be easily determined in case of larger values of alpha [2], [4].
In general, setting alpha to 10000 can make VMD decompose signal well [5], [6]. For example,
we decompose one-channel semi-simulated EEG by VMD in case of three alpha values. And
the semi-simulated EEG with different SNRs are composed by the same ground truth EEG and
simulated artifacts. Figure. 2 shows the Fourier spectra of extracted sub -bands for VMD
realizations. We can see that the robustness of sub -bands is poor in case of setting alpha to
1000 (first column in Figure. 2). When alpha is 100000, the value of center frequencies of
sub-bands cannot be easily determined (third column in Figure. 2). And alpha equals 10000 is
a compromise (second column in Figure. 2).

a)SNR=0.5

b)SNR=2
Figure. 2. The Fourier spectra of extracted sub-bands for VMD realizations, in case of the
same ground truth EEG and simulated artifacts combined with different SNR: a)SNR=0.5,
b)SNR=2. The values of alpha are different in each column.
Due to space limitations, we add a brief explanation in Section III-D,
“ The balancing parameter α is chosen 10000, which is a compromise to extract sub-bands with strong
robustness and clear center frequency.”
2) n
In this work, n is the number of data points.
3) EN
EN is ensemble number in EEMD. EEMD can decompose signal well in case of large EN,
but the computational time is long. When EN is small, the computational time of EEMD is
short, but the decomposition results are influenced by assisted noise. Experience and our work
suggest that EEMD-based methods can remove artifacts more effectively, when EN is 100 [7].
However, the computational time is long. When EN is 5, the computational time of
EEMD-based methods is close to our method. Therefore, we set EN to 100 and 5 respectively
to test the performance. The results demonstrate that our proposed method enhances the
efficiency of removing artifacts from short-term few-channel EEG while ensuring
effectiveness.
We have addressed this in Section III-D as follows:
“ The computational time of EEMD is high in case of large EN. And the influence of assisted noises on the EEG
is greatly reduced.”
And
“Qualitatively, EN is set to 100 to reduce the influence of assisted noises. Quantitatively, EN is set to 5 to make
the computational time of EEMD-CCA close to that of NA-FMEMD-CCA.”

We would like to thank you again for taking the time to review our manuscript.

Reviewer #3:
1. Response to comment: (Based on my previous comments, the authors changed the
manuscript accordingly, improving the overall quality. I have only an eventual suggestion
about the quality of the english, that should be carefully checked.)
Response:
We thank the reviewer for her/his favorable comment. We are glad that the reviewer is
satisfied. And we have carefully checked our manuscript and corrected multiple sentences. We
hope this improves the quality of the english.

Special thanks to you for your good comments.

References
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12, pp. 2583-2587, Nov. 2006.
[2] Q. Chen, Y. Y. Li, and X. H. Yuan, “A hybrid method for muscle artifact removal from EEG signals,” Journal of
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[3] J. Cheng et al., “Remove Diverse Artifacts Simultaneously From a Single-Channel EEG Based on SSA and ICA: A
Semi-Simulated Study,” IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 60276-60289, May. 2019.
[4] K. Dragomiretskiy and D. Zosso, “Variational Mode Decomposition,” IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 62, no.
3, pp. 531-544, Feb. 2014.
[5] C. Dora, and P. K. Biswal, “An improved algorithm for efficient ocular artifact suppression from frontal EEG electrodes
using VMD,” Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering, vol 40, Issue 1, pp. 148-161, Mar. 2020.
[6] W. Gu, L. Zhou, “Evaluation on Filter Performance of Variational Mode Decomposition and Its Application in Separating
Closely Spaced Modes,” Shock and Vibration, vol, 2020, pp.1-16, 2020.
[7] Z. Wu, N. E. Huang, “Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition: a Noise-Assisted Data Analysis Method,” Advances in
Adaptive Data Analysis, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-41, 2008.

We appreciate for Editor Shervin Shirmohammadi’s and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and
hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

Yours sincerely,

Yan Liu