Enhancing motor imagery EEG classification with a Riemannian geometry-based spatial filtering (RSF) method

Motor imagery (MI) refers to the mental simulation of movements without physical execution, and it can be captured using electroencephalography (EEG). This area has garnered significant research interest due to its substantial potential in brain-computer interface (BCI) applications, especially for individuals with physical disabilities. However, accurate classification of MI EEG signals remains a major challenge due to their non-stationary nature, low signal-to-noise ratio, and sensitivity to both external and physiological noise. Traditional classification methods, such as common spatial pattern (CSP), often assume that the data is stationary and Gaussian, which limits their applicability in real-world scenarios where these assumptions do not hold. These challenges highlight the need for more robust methods to improve classification accuracy in MI-BCI systems. To address these issues, this study introduces a Riemannian geometry-based spatial filtering (RSF) method that projects EEG signals into a lower-dimensional subspace, maximizing the Riemannian distance between covariance matrices from different classes. By leveraging the inherent geometric properties of EEG data, RSF enhances the discriminative power of the features while maintaining robustness against noise. The performance of RSF was evaluated in combination with ten commonly used MI decoding algorithms, including CSP with linear discriminant analysis (CSP-LDA), Filter Bank CSP (FBCSP), Minimum Distance to Riemannian Mean (MDM), Tangent Space Mapping (TSM), EEGNet, ShallowConvNet (sCNN), DeepConvNet (dCNN), FBCNet, Graph-CSPNet, and LMDA-Net, using six publicly available MI-BCI datasets. The results demonstrate that RSF significantly improves classification accuracy and reduces computational time, particularly for deep learning models with high computational complexity. These findings underscore the potential of RSF as an effective spatial filtering approach for MI EEG classification, providing new insights and opportunities for the development of robust MI-BCI systems. The code for this research is available at https://github.com/PLC-TJU/RSF.