30th Annual International IEEE EMBS Conference
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, August 20-24, 2008
Hilbert-Huang Spectrum as a New Field for the Identification of
EEG Event Related De-/Synchronization for BCI applications
Konstantinos I. Panoulas, Student Member, IEEE, Leontios J. Hadjileontiadis, Member, IEEE, and
Stavros M. Panas, Member, IEEE
Abstract-Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) usually utilize the
suppression of mu-rhythm during actual or imagined motor
activity. In order to create a BCI system, a signal processing
method is required to extract features upon which the
discrimination is based. In this article, the Empirical Mode
Decomposition along with the Hilbert-Huang Spectrum (HHS)
is found to contain the necessary information to be considered
as an input to a discriminator. Also, since the HHS defines
amplitude and instantaneous frequency for each sample, it can
be used for an online BCI system. Experimental results when
the HHS applied to EEG signals from an on-line database (BCI
Competition III) show the potentiality of the proposed analysis
to capture the imagined motor activity, contributing to a more
enhanced BCI performance.
I. INTRODUCTION
W HEN the human brain is in a calm and alert state of
consciousness, the sensorimotor cortices show
rhythmic electroencephalogram (EEG) oscillations, known
as mu-rhythm with their frequencies ranging from 8 to
12Hz. Motor activity, both actual and imagined, as well as
somatosensory stimulation, attenuate the mu-rhythm in a
phenomenon known as Event Related Desynchorization
(ERD). After the motor activity is stopped, the mu-rhythm
rebounds and this phenomenon is known as Event Related
Synchronization (ERS) [1], [2]. The mu-rhythm during ERS
is usually higher than during calm states of consciousness.
ERD is a usual candidate for the creation of a Brain
Computer Interface (BCI) because most people can learn
how to control the mu-rhythm using imagined motor
activity. The simplest case of a BCI is the left and right
control of a cursor and in order to achieve this, the
imaginary movements of the left and the right hand have to
be distinguished.
Generally, a BCI consists of a signal processing part, in
which some features are extracted from the signal, and a
classification part in which the different states are
Manuscript received April 16, 2008.
Konstantinos Panoulas is a PhD candidate at the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering, Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, Greece (e-mail: panoulas@auth.gr).
Leontios Hadjileontiadis is with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, School of Engineering, Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece. The author can be contacted at:. Aristotle University
Campus, Building D GR54124, tel +302310996340 (e-mail:
leontios@auth.gr).
Stavros Panas is with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, School of Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,
Greece (e-mail: spanas@auth.gr).
978-1-4244-1815-2/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE.
discriminated using the features acquired from the previous
part. The signal processing methods reported in the state-of-
the-art for imagined motion BCI algorithms include band
power estimates [3], AR modeling [4], [5], Fourier transform
[6], [7], and prediction neural networks.
In this paper, the EEG signal is processed using Empirical
Mode Decomposition (EMD) and Hilbert-Huang Spectrum
(HHS), revealing appropriate information for the
discrimination of the ERD and the ERS events, contributing
to a more enhanced BCI performance.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Empirical Mode Decomposition
The EMD is a signal-dependent decomposition of a time
series into waveforms modulated in amplitude and frequency
[8]. The iterative extraction of these components is based on
the local representation of the signal as the sum of a local
oscillating component and a local trend. The first iteration of
the algorithm consists in extracting a component, referred to
as Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF), which represents the
oscillations of the entire signal. The difference between the
original signal and the IMF time series is the residual. The
IMF component is obtained by a sifting process such that it
satisfies the requirement that it is zero-mean and that the
number of extrema and the number of zero crossings are
identical or differ by one. This same procedure is then
applied to the residual to extract the second IMF. Therefore,
all IMFs are iteratively extracted. The nonstationary signal
x(t ) is then represented as a sum of IMFs and the residual
K
component x(t ) ci (t ) rK (t ) , where ci (t ) denotes
i 1
the ith extracted empirical mode and rK (t ) the residual,
which is a monotonic function without extrema and can
either be the mean trend or a constant.
The EMD algorithm can be summarized as follows:
1. Identify all the extrema (minima and maxima) of x(t ) .
2. Interpolate between minima, maxima using cubic spline to
produce the lower emin (t ) and the upper emax (t ) envelope,
respectively.
3. Compute the average m(t )
(emax (t ) emin (t )) / 2 .
4. Extract the IMF component by c1 (t ) x(t ) m(t ).
5. Iterate on the residual m(t ).
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 B. Hilbert-Huang Spectrum
In order to calculate the HHS, the Hilbert transform is
applied to each IMF using the following equation:
(1)
where P indicates the Cauchy principal value and .
The amplitude , the phase and the instantaneous
frequency can be calculated as:
, (2)
, (3)

. (4)
After performing the Hilbert transform on each IMF
component, we can express the data in the following form:
(5)
Equation (5) gives both the amplitude and the frequency of
each component as functions of time [8]. The variable
amplitude and the instantaneous frequency have not only
greatly improved the efficiency of the expansion, but also
enabled the expansion to accommodate non-stationary data.
With IMF expansion, the amplitude and the frequency
modulations are also clearly separated. In this way, we have
broken through the restriction of the constant amplitude and
fixed-frequency Fourier expansion, and arrived at a variable
amplitude and frequency representation. Equation (5) also
enables us to represent the amplitude and the instantaneous
frequency as functions of time in a three-dimensional plot, in
which the amplitude can be contoured on the frequency-time
plane. This frequency-time distribution of the amplitude is Fig. 1. The EMD of the EEG channel C3 from recording 2. The
subject was instructed to move the left hand after .
designated as the Hilbert Huang amplitude spectrum,
, or simply HHS.

III. DATASET CHARACTERISTICS

The dataset used in this work is a publicly available
dataset used for BCI Competition III (http://ida.first.
fraunhofer.de/projects/bci/competition_iii/). This experiment
contains 280 trials each 9 seconds in length. The first two
seconds of each trial were quiet. At , a trigger beep
indicated the beginning of the trial and a cross was displayed
for one second. At , a left or a right arrow was
displayed asking the subject to move a bar into the direction
of the cue.
Three bipolar EEG channels were recorded with a
sampling rate of 128Hz for each trial and filtered between
0.5 and 30Hz. 7KH FKDQQHO SRVLWLRQV RQ WKH VXEMHFW¶V EUDLQ Fig. 2. The HHS of channel C3, from the 2nd trial of the experiment.
The subject was instructed to move the left hand thus the left
were C3, Cz and C4, according to the international 10\20 sensorimotor cortex (which responds to right hand movements) should
system. The acquired signals were further filtered with an not show mu rhythm suppression.
8th-order Butterworth band pass filter between 7 and 13Hz to
isolate the mu-rhythm and the HHS was then applied. instructed to move the left hand, thus the left sensorimotor
cortex (which responds to right hand movements) should not
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION show significant mu-rhythm suppression, something that is
Some indicative results from the application of the HHS reflected to the IMFs after and more clearly at the
to the whole available EEG dataset are shown in this section. corresponding HHS, illustrated in Fig. 2.
In particular, Fig. 1 denotes the EMD of the EEG channel Figure 3 presents the EMD of the EEG channel C4 from
C3 from recording 2. Most of the signal energy is located at recording 2. The subject was instructed to move the left hand
the first two IMFs. In that experiment, the subject was thus the right sensorimotor cortex (which responds to left

3833
 Fig. 4. The HHS of channel C4, from the 2 nd trial of the experiment.
The subject was instructed to move the bar left, thus the right
sensorimotor cortex (which responds to left hand movements) should
show significant mu rhythm suppression.

Fig. 3. The EMD of the EEG channel C4 from recording 2. The

subject was instructed to move the left hand thus the right
sensorimotor cortex (which responds to left hand movements) should
show mu rhythm suppression. After the 4th second of the recording
WKHPXUK\WKPVXSSUHVVLRQFDQEHVHHQDWWKHILUVW,0)¶V

hand movements) should show mu-rhythm suppression.

After the 4th second of the recording the mu-rhythm
suppression can be seen at the first two IMFs and the
relevant HHS depicted in Fig. 4.
The EMD of the EEG channel C3 from recording 10 is
shown in Fig. 5. Most of the signal energy is located at the
ILUVW  ,0)¶V 7KH VXEMHFW ZDV LQVWUXFWHG WR PRYH WKH OHIW
hand thus the right sensorimotor cortex (which responds to
left hand movements) should show mu-rhythm suppression.
After the 4th second, the mu-rhythm suppression is visible at
the first two IMFs and the corresponding HHS illustrated in
Fig. 6. At the end of the signal around the ERS event
is evident (both in Figs. 5 and 6).
Lastly, the EMD of the EEG channel C4 from the 10th Fig. 5 The EMD of the EEG channel C3 from recording 10. The
subject was instructed to move the left hand. At the end of the signal
trial is shown in Fig. 7. Again most of the signal energy is ( ) the ERS event is notable.
located at the first two IMFs. The subject here was instructed
to move the bar right thus the right sensorimotor cortex HHS of Fig. 8.
(which responds to left hand movements) should show The results presented in Figs. 1-8, denote that the HHS
minimal or no mu-rhythm suppression which can easily be could clearly track the EDS/ERS phenomena, and could
spotted at the first two IMFs and reflected at the relevant reveal information for on-line BCI implementation. The

3834
 Fig. 6. The HHS spectrum of channel C3, from the 10 th trial of the
experiment. The subject was instructed to move the bar right, thus the
left sensorimotor cortex should show significant mu rhythm
suppression between 4 and 7.5s, whereas the ERS event is clear
for .
Fig. 7. The EMD of the EEG channel C4 from the 10 th trial. The
subject was instructed to move the bar right resulting in minimal or no
mu-rhythm suppression which can easily be seen at the first two
IMFs.
ability of the HHS to follow the nonstationary characteristics
of the EEG signal secures a new domain to act upon for a
more efficient direction-identification of the XVHU¶Vintention
of a movement. As the construction of the IMFs is based on
the information of the signal itself, the analysis bases are not
3835
Fig. 8. The HHS of channel C4, from the 10th trial of the experiment.
The subject was instructed to move the bar right, thus the right
sensorimotor cortex should show minimal mu-rhythm suppression.
predefined, as in the case of wavelet transform, resulting in a
more adaptive performance of the HHS. Finally, the
incorporation of selective IMFs, could lead to a more
focused signal processing in the area of the mu-rhythm,
eliminating further effects at other frequency bands.
V. CONCLUSION
A new approach in the identification of the motor activity,
both actual and imagined reflected in the mu-rhythm
attenuation or rebound, using HHS analysis was presented
here. The proposed approach seems to efficiently track the
changes in the mu-rhythm, as tested in the HHS analysis of
EEG signals from a BCI on-line database. This performance
paves the way for adopting a new domain for EEG analysis
that could foster the on-line BCI implementation.
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