A Combined EMD-ICA Analysis of Simultaneously Registered EEG-fMRI Data

Within a combined EEG-fMRI study of contour integration, we analyze responses to Gabor stimuli with an Empirical Mode Decomposition combined with an Independent Component Analysis. Generally, responses to different stimuli are very similar thus hard to differentiate. EMD and ICA are used intermingled and not simply in a sequential way. This novel combination helps to suppress redundant modes resulting from an application of ensemble EMD alone. The simulation results show an improved mode separation quality. Hence, the proposed method is an efficient data analysis tool to clearly reveal differences between similar response signals and activity distributions.