A new spatiotemporal filtering method for single-trial ERP subcomponent estimation

A new spatiotemporal filtering method for single trial estimation of event related potential (ERP) subcomponents is presented here. The method is an extension of the recent method for estimation of ERP components developed by Li et al. [1]. This method can be used for estimation of ERP subcomponents when they have temporal overlap and are often viewed as one component. Using the scalp projection of the subcomponents, a new constraint is added to the cost function which can deflate the other subcomponents. Therefore, the proposed method is capable of estimating the ERP subcomponents effectively. The method is applied to both simulated and real data and has been shown to perform very well even in low signal to noise ratios. The approach can be especially useful in mental fatigue analysis where the relative variability of the P300 subcomponents are the key factors in order to detect the level of fatigue.