EEGGAN-Net: enhancing EEG signal classification through data augmentation

Background Emerging brain-computer interface (BCI) technology holds promising potential to enhance the quality of life for individuals with disabilities. Nevertheless, the constrained accuracy of electroencephalography (EEG) signal classification poses numerous hurdles in real-world applications.Methods In response to this predicament, we introduce a novel EEG signal classification model termed EEGGAN-Net, leveraging a data augmentation framework. By incorporating Conditional Generative Adversarial Network (CGAN) data augmentation, a cropped training strategy and a Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) attention mechanism, EEGGAN-Net adeptly assimilates crucial features from the data, consequently enhancing classification efficacy across diverse BCI tasks.Results The EEGGAN-Net model exhibits notable performance metrics on the BCI Competition IV-2a and IV-2b datasets. Specifically, it achieves a classification accuracy of 81.3% with a kappa value of 0.751 on the IV-2a dataset, and a classification accuracy of 90.3% with a kappa value of 0.79 on the IV-2b dataset. Remarkably, these results surpass those of four other CNN-based decoding models.Conclusions In conclusion, the amalgamation of data augmentation and attention mechanisms proves instrumental in acquiring generalized features from EEG signals, ultimately elevating the overall proficiency of EEG signal classification.