Get rid of the beat in mobile EEG applications: A framework towards automated cardiogenic artifact detection and removal in single-channel EEG

Brain activity recordings outside clinical or laboratory settings using mobile EEG systems have gained popular interest allowing for realistic long-term monitoring and eventually leading to identification of possible biomarkers for diseases. The less obtrusive, minimized systems (e.g., single-channel EEG, no ECG reference) have the drawback of artifact contamination with varying intensity that are particularly difficult to identify and remove. We developed brMEGA, the first open-source algorithm for automated detection and removal of cardiogenic artifacts using non-linear time-frequency analysis and machine learning to (1) detect whether and where cardiogenic artifacts exist, and (2) remove those artifacts. We compare our algorithm against visual artifact identification and a previously established approach and validate it in one real and semi-real datasets. We demonstrated that brMEGA successfully identifies and substantially removes cardiogenic artifacts in single-channel EEG recordings. Moreover, recovery of cardiogenic artifacts, if present, gives the opportunity for future extraction of heart rate features without ECG measurement.