Abstract
A passive brain–computer interface (BCI) based upon functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain signals is used for earlier detection of human drowsiness during driving tasks. This BCI modality acquired hemodynamic signals of 13 healthy subjects from the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPFC) of the brain. Drowsiness activity is recorded using a continuous-wave fNIRS system and eight channels over the right DPFC. During the experiment, sleep-deprived subjects drove a vehicle in a driving simulator while their cerebral oxygen regulation (CORE) state was continuously measured. Vector phase analysis (VPA) was used as a classifier to detect drowsiness state along with sleep stage-based threshold criteria. Extensive training and testing with various feature sets and classifiers are done to justify the adaptation of threshold criteria for any subject without requiring recalibration. Three statistical features (mean oxyhemoglobin, signal peak, and the sum of peaks) along with six VPA features (trajectory slopes of VPA indices) were used. The average accuracies for the five classifiers are 90.9% for discriminant analysis, 92.5% for support vector machines, 92.3% for nearest neighbors, 92.4% for both decision trees, and ensembles over all subjects’ data. Trajectory slopes of CORE vector magnitude and angle: m(|R|) and m(∠R) are the best-performing features, along with ensemble classifier with the highest accuracy of 95.3% and minimum computation time of 40 ms. The statistical significance of the results is validated with a p-value of less than 0.05. The proposed passive BCI scheme demonstrates a promising technique for online drowsiness detection using VPA along with sleep stage classification.
Introduction
Invasive and noninvasive techniques are used in brain–computer interface (BCI) for the detection and measurement of brain activities using different BCI modalities (; ). Invasive BCI is based upon placing electrodes inside the brain cortex under direct interaction with neurons and hence requires complex surgery, medical conditions, and greater risk of infections (; ; ). Nowadays, partially invasive techniques like electrocorticography (ECoG) are more in use. In ECoG, the electrode array is placed inside the skull and directly above the cortex. It requires easier surgery, and medical conditions like the infectious risk are very less (). Furthermore, it provides the best signal quality, and good temporal and spatial resolution (). However, the availability of subjects is still a difficult task for invasive BCI techniques. Contrarily, noninvasive BCIs are more commonly used due to no surgery requirements and the absence of medical risks ().
Noninvasive BCIs use either electrophysiological signal or hemodynamic response phenomenon-based modalities. Electrophysiological BCI modalities are electroencephalography (EEG), electrooculography (EOG), electrocardiography (ECG), and electromyography (EMG), which record neuronal brain activity, eye movement, heart rate, and muscle movement, respectively (; ; ). Hemodynamic response-based modalities use functional neuroimaging models like functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which record brain activity from changes in blood flow and blood oxygen levels in the active areas due to neuronal firing (; ; ; ). Another functional BCI modality is magnetoencephalography (MEG), which is based upon recording the magnetic field in response to the electrical activity of neurons at active regions of the brain (; ). EEG and fNIRS BCIs are more widely used in detecting brain activity due to their low cost and better performance features (; ; ). Hybrid BCIs are also used, which include combinations of EEG, fNIRS, ECG, EOG, EMG, or other techniques depending upon which activities are to be recorded simultaneously for a specific task (; ; ; ). Among functional techniques, fNIRS is more safe, reliable, low-cost, portable, and easy to set up and has a good spatial resolution (; ; ). It measures changes in concentration of oxygenated hemoglobin (ΔHbO), deoxygenated hemoglobin (ΔHbR), total hemoglobin or cerebral blood volume (ΔHbT), and cerebral oxygen exchange (ΔCOE) as a measure of brain activity in active regions resulted from neuronal consumption of glucose, measured by optical sensors using near-infrared light signals that are directly introduced into the scalp, and hence, it is free from noise and electrical interference (; ; ; ).
Brain activities are recorded and classified under active, reactive, and passive states of BCI (). Active BCI records brain activity generated due to intentional actions like mental computation tasks, motor imagery, and motion intents. Reactive BCI records brain activity produced in response to some external stimuli like audio, video, touch, or pain signal introduction (; ; ). Active and reactive brain signals can be more easily generated and detected, unlike passive brain activities. Passive brain activities are produced unintentionally by a human brain under certain body conditions like drowsiness, sleep, fatigue, stress, loss of attention, or focus (; ; ). These passive states imply very crucial effects when arising during high attention-seeking tasks like vehicle driving. Drowsiness or sleep during driving causes severe accidents worldwide (; ). Conventional techniques to detect drowsiness may include measuring the eye blink rate, heart rate, or head movement with increased chances of false detections. However, a passive BCI system is more preferred to detect drowsiness conditions from brain signals, and an activity can be well estimated earlier and in a precise manner. fNIRS-based BCI is also used to detect brain states due to fatigue or sleep loss (). This activity is recorded from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and specifically from dorsolateral PFC (DPFC) (; ). Studies have shown rapid and increased brain activity in the DPFC region under brain state transitions from wakefulness to non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stages (; ). This results in increased concentrations of ΔHbO and decreases in ΔCOE, which indicates sleep as a refreshing process (; ). During driving, these rapid changeovers between sleep stages (as experienced when a person is consistently nodding off) could be devastating and must be recorded at an earlier stage to avoid life losses (; ).
This study investigates a novel drowsiness detection scheme using hemodynamic activities of the brain with a passive BCI. Hemodynamic brain signals are acquired from the right DPFC using eight channels of the fNIRS system. All the hemodynamic signals are plotted upon vector phase analysis (VPA) to get the cerebral oxygen regulation (CORE) status of the brain. Sleep stage-based threshold circles are employed on VPA, which resulted from systematically proposed criteria. The criteria deduce radii of sleep stage (N1, N2, and N3) threshold circles from sample data of wakefulness (W) stage of the subject. As CORE status is constantly monitored over VPA against threshold circles, drowsiness activity is detected when the CORE trajectory crosses threshold circles in specific octants of VPA. The universality and validity of proposed threshold circle criteria for any subject is the core and fundamental objective of this work. The criteria of threshold circles are validated over fNIRS data of 13 subjects. A total of nine features are used for training and classification, out of which six features are extracted from VPA and three statistical features from ΔHbO signal. Five machine learning classifiers [discriminant analysis (DA), support vector machines (SVM), decision trees (DT), k-nearest neighbors (kNN), and ensembles] are used to classify the data of all the subjects according to the proposed scheme. Slopes of CORE vector magnitude and angle are the best feature pair along with the SVM classifier to perform well overall.
Materials and Methods
Subjects/Participants
To collect this drowsiness dataset (; ), 13 healthy male subjects (mean age: 28.5 ± 4.8 years) were recruited. Two of them were left-handed, and all had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Neither of them was reported to have any psychiatric, visual, or neurological disorder. All the participants willingly consented when details about the experimental procedure were explained. The study was reviewed and approved by Pusan National University Institutional Review Board.
Experimental Procedure
The experiment was conducted in the morning before which all subjects were sleep-deprived for 10 h the night before. Participants were subjected to car driving in a simulated environment with medium traffic and pedestrian density. Brain signals for 5 min were collected for baseline adjustment during initial driving trials for environment familiarization. Each subject drove the car for almost 1 h in which fNIRS signals were collected for 30 ± 5 min when they were visually observed to be near drowsy. Biomarkers for the drowsy state were placed when a change in facial expressions or eye closure was observed due to sleep loss or fatigue. Subjects remained seated in comfortable chairs and were asked to minimize head or muscle movements to avoid motion-related artifacts in brain signals. Figure 1 shows the flow diagram of the experimental procedure.
FIGURE 1
Sensor Configuration
Seven sources with 16 detectors of the near-infrared range were used to make combinational pairs of 28 channels to acquire fNIRS signals over various brain locations. Optodes for these 28 channels were placed at PFC and DPFC according to the international 10–20 system. The distance between adjacent detectors was 3 cm, and the distance between source and detector was 2.1 cm. These 28 channels were further divided into three regions (A, B, and C). Region A comprises channels 1–8, which were placed at the right DPFC as shown in Figure 2. Channels 9–20 were regarded as region B and placed at PFC. Channels 21–28 were placed at left DPFC and specified as region C. Right DPFC (region A) is proved to be more suitable and effective for drowsiness-related activity detection (; ). In this research work, fNIRS data from channels 1–8 (region A) are focused on sleep detection in online passive BCI applications.
FIGURE 2
Signal Acquisition and Processing
A continuous-wave imaging system (DYNOT, NIRx Medical Technologies, United States) was used for fNIRS brain signal acquisition. Data were obtained at a sampling frequency of 1.81 Hz with near-infrared lights of 760 and 830 nm wavelengths. Motion-related and other artifacts were removed from the acquired data by applying Gaussian filters (; ; ). Band rejection of ranges 0.3∼0.4, 1∼1.2, and <0.01 Hz were used for respiration, heartbeat, and Mayer-wave artifact removal, respectively. Oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin concentration changes (ΔHbO and ΔHbR, respectively) were obtained by converting raw intensity values of two different wavelengths by using modified Beer–Lambert law (MBLL). The MBLL is stated as,
where A is the absorbance of light (optical density), Iin is the incident intensity of light, Iout is the detected density of light, α is the specific extinction coefficient in μM–1 cm–1, c is the absorber concentration in μM, l is the distance between the source and the detector in cm, d is the differential path-length factor (DPF), and η is the loss of light due to scattering.
Vector Phase Analysis
If the hemodynamic indicators of fNIRS signals (ΔHbO and ΔHbR) are mapped as orthogonal axes in an orthogonal vector coordinate plane, then they give rise to a very promising scheme regarded as VPA method as shown in Figure 3. When this orthogonal coordinate plane is rotated by an angle of π /4 rad counterclockwise, then it adds up new useful components in this vector plane: ΔHbT and ΔCOE (due to neurovascular coupling) (; ; ; ; ). These indices are defined as,
FIGURE 3
The relationship among all these four hemodynamic indices is given in the following mathematical notation.
Any point on this vector coordinate plane holds a value-based upon four indices ΔHbO, ΔHbR, ΔHbT, and ΔCOE; and its distance from the origin specifies a vector R that reveals information about CORE (
Based upon axes of this vector coordinate plane, it is divided into eight octants, each of which represents specific hemodynamic features of the fNIRS brain signal as shown in Figure 3. These octants are referred to as phases indicating oxygenated (oxic) and deoxygenated (capnic) states of the brain. Increased and decreased blood oxygenation refers to hyperoxic (HerOx) and hypoxic (HyOx) states (
TABLE 1
| Phases | ΔHbO | ΔHbR | ΔHbT | ΔCOE | Condition | CORE state | Signal feature |
| 1 | Positive | Positive | Positive | Negative | ΔHbO > ΔHbR | HerOx≫HerCap | Initial dip |
| 2 | Positive | Positive | Positive | Positive | ΔHbO < ΔHbR, ΔHbT > ΔCOE | HerOx≪HerCap | |
| 3 | Negative | Positive | Positive | Positive | ΔHbT < ΔCOE | HyOx≪HerCap | |
| 4 | Negative | Positive | Negative | Positive | HyOx≫HerCap | ||
| 5 | Negative | Negative | Negative | Positive | ΔHbO < ΔHbR | HyOx≫HyCap | |
| 6 | Negative | Negative | Negative | Negative | ΔHbO > ΔHbR,ΔHbT < ΔCOE | HyOx≪HyCap | Hemodynamic activity |
| 7 | Positive | Negative | Negative | Negative | ΔHbT > ΔCOE | HerOx≪HyCap | |
| 8 | Positive | Negative | Positive | Negative | ΔHbT < ΔCOE | HerOx≫HyCap |
Characteristics of different phases in the vector phase diagram.
CORE, cerebral oxygen regulation.
Sleep Stage-Based Threshold Circles
Long sleep deprivation may cause brain sleep or hallucinations while a person seems awake. In such cases, drowsiness can instantly lead the human brain through various sleep stages (
where represents ,,,, which are the sample means of phase diagram vectors’ magnitude for W, N1, N2, and N3, stages, respectively; and n is the number of samples used for mean values computation from the respective sample spaces.
Eqs. (9, 10) give the radii of threshold circles for W and NREM stages in the vector phase diagram as shown in Figure 4. These threshold circles along with the VPA diagram are employed to detect drowsiness activity when the fNIRS brain signal trajectory follows a specific pattern according to CORE states. Eq. (9) is evaluated for all eight channels of right DPFC for each subject with sample space spanning over 5 min of W state. Once is obtained, Eq. (10) is evaluated for all channels of each subject to obtain ,,.
FIGURE 4

Threshold circles of wakefulness and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep stages employed for drowsiness detection and sleep stage classification, obtained from Eqs. (9, 10).
Vector Phase Analysis Trajectory Pattern for Drowsiness Detection
During wakefulness, focus/attention-seeking tasks, neurons consume more glucose, resulting in increased ΔCOE, and the brain experiences HerCap as well as HyOx CORE states (
where n is the number of samples required to find the mean angle and mean magnitude for the duration of 0–5 s time window, which is reported to be the shortest to find the drowsiness activity (
Feature Space and Classification
To standardize the threshold circle criteria as a standard framework for any subject to detect activity online, comprehensive testing and validation are need (
where k is the sample vector for 0–5 s time window with N as the last sample in it, X is the variable for six parameters of the vector phase diagram and m(ΔX) is slope or gradient of these parameters over k, and Mk is the mean value of ΔHbO in k. P was calculated as the maximum value of local maximums of ΔHbO in k by using max and findpeaks functions of MATLAB 9.5 (MathWorks, United States). SoP was computed as a summation of local maximums calculated above.
After feature extraction, feature scaling was done in the range [a b]=[−1 1] for all features by using min–max normalization as stated below.
where Y is original value and Y′ is rescaled/normalized value of the feature in the said range.
These rescaled features are further employed in multiclass classifiers for training and testing the dataset using DT, DA, SVM, kNN (
Results
This study proposes a novel online classification technique for the early detection of driver drowsiness using VPA. The outermost threshold circle is based on the mean CORE vector magnitude of the wakefulness state , which can vary subject-wise and can be deduced from initial baseline data. For this purpose, five trials per subject were performed at different time instants, where each trial period was 5 min followed by significant rest time to avoid fatigue effect. While inner threshold circles are based on mean CORE vector magnitude of NREM sleep stages N1, N2, and N3, ,, and are dependent upon the W circle according to a fixed relationship as in Eq. (10). CORE state points based upon ΔHbO and ΔHbR are continuously being plotted over vector phase diagram, and a continuous VPA trajectory is obtained as shown in Figure 5. Drowsiness activity is detected when the VPA trajectory crosses the W state threshold circle in phases 7 and 8 of the vector phase diagram according to the criterion of Eqs. (11, 12), showing a decrease in ΔCOE, which is an indicator of transition from W to NREM sleep. Trajectory computation and its slope assessment are done over a margin of 5 s to avoid false detection through this scheme. The results obtained using the proposed scheme for all the channels of region A of Subject 1 are shown in Figure 5. The active channels are highlighted with shaded boxes in which a trajectory crosses the threshold circles in the fourth quadrant of the phase diagram, indicating drowsiness activity detection.
FIGURE 5

Vector phase analysis (VPA) trajectories of all channels (Subject 1) obtained by plotting Eqs. (7, 8) at the drowsiness stage. The shaded boxes show the active detection channels in which trajectory has crossed the W threshold circle in the fourth quadrant according to the magnitude and angle criterion.
The active channels and consequently the precise brain region for drowsiness detection can be identified using this proposed novel scheme. Upon further assessment of active channels for all the subjects, Channel 8 turns out to be the most active channel among all and is situated near the F8 electrode position according to the 10–20 system. Figure 6 shows the successful drowsiness detection on Channel 8 of various subjects. It is to be noted that trajectory patterns are not the same as the active channel of different subjects. Trajectories could follow any path, but they must satisfy the proposed angle and magnitude criterion. Real-time signals of ΔHbO and ΔHbR could be used according to the proposed scheme to detect drowsiness online as soon as the onset of activity.
FIGURE 6

Vector phase analysis (VPA) trajectories of various subjects at an active channel (Channel 8) showing drowsiness activity detection, located at F8 electrode position of the 10–20 system.
The computation of sleep stage thresholds for any subject requires extensive system training and time-taking assessment each time. To avoid this need for retraining and reassessment, a universally applicable criterion is easier to follow each time for any subject with minimum system training requirements. In this study, such a criterion is proposed, which is universally applicable to any subject by only requiring baseline or reference data of wakefulness or resting state. The applicability of sleep stage-based threshold circle criteria for any subject needed extensive validation, which makes it a standard scheme in online detection systems.
For this purpose, multiple classifiers were trained and tested for all possible combinations of two features. Figure 7 presents 36 two-dimensional feature spaces for all feature combinations calculated for the 0–5 s time window over all 13 subjects. It can be observed that m(ΔHbR) vs. m(ΔHbO), m(|R|) vs. m(∠R) and [m(ΔHbT),m(ΔCOE),P] vs. m(|R|) provide the best data separation between sleep stages. Table 2 shows the classification accuracies obtained with all possible binary pairs of features using best-performing classifiers among the five mentioned above. So the above-mentioned feature combinations resulted in 90% classification accuracy, while all other pairs resulted in an accuracy of 70% and above, except only three pairs between 65 and 70%. Table 2 further supports confidence in using features based on all six VPA indices for sleep stage classification.
FIGURE 7

Thirty-six 4-class feature spaces combining all features [six vector phase analysis (VPA) and three statistical] for separating the W, N1, N2, and N3 stages represented by pink, blue, red, and black colored data points, respectively.
TABLE 2
| Features | m(ΔHbR) | m(∠R) | m(|R|) | m(ΔHbT) | m(ΔCOE) | M | P | SoP |
| m(ΔHbO) | 90.0 | 88.4 | 89.9 | 89.9 | 89.9 | 75.1 | 74.9 | 74.9 |
| m(ΔHbR) | – | 88.3 | 89.9 | 89.8 | 89.9 | 84.1 | 81.3 | 79.6 |
| m(∠R) | – | – | 90.0 | 84.7 | 88.0 | 74.7 | 70.3 | 68.3 |
| m(|R|) | – | – | – | 90.0 | 90.0 | 89.8 | 90.0 | 89.8 |
| m(ΔHbT) | – | – | – | – | 89.9 | 76.5 | 70.4 | 69.0 |
| m(ΔCOE) | – | – | – | – | – | 85.8 | 83.7 | 82.1 |
| M | – | – | – | – | – | – | 71.8 | 71.4 |
| P | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 65.5 |
Percentage accuracies obtained by combinations of two features (0–5 s window, all subjects, kNN classifier).
Table 3 shows subject-wise classification accuracies obtained with the best-performing feature combination and classifier. It has been observed that the m(∠R), m(|R|) pair performed the best for 11 subjects out of 13, with an almost 85% success rate. For two subjects, m(ΔHbO), m(ΔHbR) performed well comparatively but without significant improvement in the accuracy. So it can be deduced that trajectory gradients of CORE vector angle and magnitude are optimal VPA features for sleep stage classification, as they resulted in more than 90% accuracy for all subjects. Hence, drowsiness activity can be obtained by observing which phase the VPA trajectory lies in and what its distance is from the vector phase diagram’s origin. By constantly observing the relevant change in these two aspects, drowsiness activity can be detected.
TABLE 3
| Subject | Accuracy (%) | Feature set |
| 1 | 93.4 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 2 | 91.4 | m(ΔHbO),m(ΔHbR) |
| 3 | 95.4 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 4 | 93.2 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 5 | 92.7 | All six VPA features |
| 6 | 93.4 | m(ΔHbO),m(ΔHbR) |
| 7 | 93.9 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 8 | 90.5 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 9 | 95.3 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 10 | 91.0 | All six VPA features |
| 11 | 93.4 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 12 | 91.5 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| 13 | 92.4 | m(∠R),m(|R|) |
| Mean | 92.9 | m(∠R) and m(|R|) performed well overall |
Best classification accuracies in brain region A (all channels, 0–5 s window, SVM classifier).
SVM, support vector machine; VPA, vector phase analysis.
Table 4 compares the percentage accuracy and computation time for cross-validated multiclass classifiers. It is noted that all the classifiers other than DA performed well with less variance accuracy among them but significant differences in computation time. SVM has the highest accuracy, but its computation time almost doubled as compared with that of DT and kNN classifiers. Ensemble classifier is chosen as the best-performing classifier because it has the least computation time and its accuracy is almost the same as that of SVM. Student’s t-test method is applied for the comparison of ensemble classifier’s accuracy with other classifier accuracies. Results show the p-value of less than 0.05 for all tests, which validated the statistical significance of the hypothesis made over outperforming ensemble classifier. Only the best-performing feature set “m(∠R) and m(|R|)” is used for classification accuracies obtained in Table 4.
TABLE 4
| Subject | Decision trees | Discriminant analysis | Support vector machine | Nearest neighbor | Ensembles |
| 1 | 94.4/0.102 | 92.0/0.151 | 92.8/0.208 | 93.0/0.138 | 93.4/0.057 |
| 2 | 91.0/0.105 | 89.6/0.154 | 90.5/0.207 | 91.6/0.135 | 91.1/0.045 |
| 3 | 94.7/0.091 | 94.5/0.140 | 94.6/0.200 | 94.4/0.131 | 95.3/0.040 |
| 4 | 93.6/0.100 | 89.0/0.141 | 91.9/0.203 | 91.3/0.130 | 93.0/0.042 |
| 5 | 91.8/0.105 | 89.5/0.145 | 92.2/0.211 | 92.5/0.134 | 92.2/0.041 |
| 6 | 92.3/0.102 | 92.7/0.146 | 93.1/0.212 | 92.6/0.130 | 92.9/0.039 |
| 7 | 93.5/0.103 | 93.8/0.141 | 93.4/0.218 | 94.3/0.140 | 93.7/0.044 |
| 8 | 89.2/0.102 | 88.7/0.142 | 91.0/0.212 | 88.9/0.131 | 89.4/0.049 |
| 9 | 92.6/0.109 | 91.0/0.140 | 94.0/0.223 | 95.4/0.133 | 94.1/0.046 |
| 10 | 89.0/0.106 | 90.8/0.146 | 90.5/0.213 | 89.4/0.138 | 88.8/0.042 |
| 11 | 93.6/0.107 | 91.7/0.146 | 93.1/0.203 | 93.6/0.124 | 93.1/0.041 |
| 12 | 92.4/0.097 | 87.3/0.135 | 92.2/0.204 | 91.0/0.129 | 92.1/0.041 |
| 13 | 92.4/0.100 | 91.3/0.140 | 92.8/0.203 | 92.0/0.132 | 92.2/0.041 |
| Mean | 92.4/0.102 | 90.9/0.144 | 92.5/0.209 | 92.3/0.133 | 92.4/0.044 |
Performance comparison of five classifiers: accuracy (%)/computation time (s).
Figure 8 presents average classification accuracies obtained with all five classifiers for all subjects. Variance in accuracy values due to the usage of multiple VPA feature combinations is showed by error bars against each classifier. Here, DA and SVM showed maximum and minimum sensitivity to change of features, respectively. The length of variance bounds shows the standard deviation (SD) of accuracy from the mean value. The SD is the highest in DA, which shows that accuracy changes significantly if the feature set changes, while SD for SVM is the lowest, which shows that accuracy is minimally affected when different feature sets are used for classification.
FIGURE 8

Average classification accuracies with variance bounds obtained by using different vector phase analysis (VPA) feature pairs.
Figure 9 illustrates classification performance measures in terms of confusion/error matrix, ROC curves, and AUC. The ensemble classifier performed very well with an accuracy of 94.1% and AUC near 1 for all classes with a cross-validated classification model. Hence, these results increase the confidence in using the proposed criterion for any subject with minimum setup time.
FIGURE 9

Classification performance measures [Subject 9, all channels, m(|R|) vs. m(∠R) feature set, ensemble classifier]: (A) Confusion matrix with the number of observations at diagonal and off-diagonal entries, true-positive rate (TPR), and false-negative rate (FNR) at the right columns, and positive predictive value (PPV) and false discovery rate (FDR) at the bottom rows. (B) Multiclass receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and area under the curve (AUC) for all sleep stages.
Discussion
In previous studies related to passive BCI systems, 0–5 and 0–1 s time windows were used to classify the loss of attention/vigilance from fNIRS brain signals with off-line classification techniques (
VPA for fNIRS signals is widely used for the classification of active mental tasks (
Threshold circles obtained by EEG response, the onset of tasks, resting state, baseline data, etc., are plotted upon VPA for the hemodynamic response, initial dip, activity detection, etc., in various fNIRS- and EEG-fNIRS-based hybrid BCI studies (
General trends of the hemodynamic response of the brain during the transition from wakefulness to sleep have been investigated in fNIRS- and EEG-based BCI studies (
Conclusion
This study investigates the feasibility of the fNIRS-based passive BCI scheme for the detection of driver’s drowsiness and sleep stage classification. VPA along with fixed threshold circles is used for the online classification of this passive activity. Threshold circle criteria are based upon the CORE state of wakefulness and NREM sleep stages of any subject. The CORE trajectory, which is based upon both ΔHbO and ΔHbR indicators, is plotted upon VPA in real-time. The decision of drowsiness detection has occurred when the CORE trajectory crosses the threshold circles in the fourth quadrant of the vector phase diagram. To further validate the wide applicability of threshold circle criteria, extensive testing is done using various feature sets and classifiers over a dataset of 13 subjects. Results indicate that slopes of CORE vector angle and magnitude trajectories “m(∠R) and m(|R|)” are the best-suited features for drowsiness detection. The SVM classifier performed well overall with a mean classification accuracy of 92.5%, while the ensemble classifier took a minimum computation time of 44 ms for this four-class classification problem. Classification performance measures indicate that sleep stage-based threshold circle criteria are universally applicable for any subject with minimum setup time. Channel selection shows that the right DPFC is the more active region of the brain for drowsiness detection during driving tasks. This study validates a potential BCI scheme for real-time detection of passive brain responses for practical applications.
Statements
Data availability statement
The datasets analyzed in this article are not publicly available. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to K-SH, kshong@pusan.ac.kr.
Ethics statement
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Pusan National University Institutional Review Board. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
SA conceived the idea, processed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. MJK obtained the raw fNIRS data when he was a Ph.D. student at Pusan National University. NN developed the VPA method with a single-threshold circle. K-SH supervised the initial development of the VPA. HS and YA were involved in checking the results and manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea under the auspices of the Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korea (Grant No. NRF-2020R1A2B5B03096000).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Summary
Keywords
functional near-infrared spectroscopy, brain-computer interface, drowsiness detection, vector phase analysis, cerebral oxygen regulation, sleep stages, multiclass classification, feature selection
Citation
Arif S, Khan MJ, Naseer N, Hong K-S, Sajid H and Ayaz Y (2021) Vector Phase Analysis Approach for Sleep Stage Classification: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy-Based Passive Brain–Computer Interface. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 15:658444. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.658444
Received
25 January 2021
Accepted
09 March 2021
Published
30 April 2021
Volume
15 - 2021
Edited by
Ren Xu, Guger Technologies, Austria
Reviewed by
Farzan Majeed Noori, University of Oslo, Norway; Nauman Khalid Qureshi, Dalian University of Technology, China
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© 2021 Arif, Khan, Naseer, Hong, Sajid and Ayaz.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Keum-Shik Hong, kshong@pusan.ac.kr
This article was submitted to Brain-Computer Interfaces, a section of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
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