A comparison of classification methods for recognizing single-trial P300 in brain-computer interfaces

P300s are one of the most popular and robust control signals for brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Fast classifying P300s is vital for the good performance of P300-based BCIs. However, due to noisy background electroencephalography (EEG) environments, current P300-based BCI systems need to collect multiple trials for a reliable output, which is inefficient. This study compared a recently developed algorithm, i.e. discriminative canonical pattern matching (DCPM), with five traditional classification methods, i.e. linear discriminant analysis (LDA), stepwise LDA, Bayesian LDA, shrinkage LDA and spatial-temporal discriminant analysis (STDA), for the detection of single-trial P300s. Eight subjects participated in the classical P300-speller experiments. Study results showed that the DCPM significantly outperformed the other traditional methods in single-trial P300 classification even with small training samples, suggesting the DCPM is a promising classification algorithm for the P300-based BCI.