Assigning channel weights using an attention mechanism: an EEG interpolation algorithm

During the acquisition of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals, various factors can influence the data and lead to the presence of one or multiple bad channels. Bad channel interpolation is the use of good channels data to reconstruct bad channel, thereby maintaining the original dimensions of the data for subsequent analysis tasks. The mainstream interpolation algorithm assigns weights to channels based on the physical distance of the electrodes and does not take into account the effect of physiological factors on the EEG signal. The algorithm proposed in this study utilizes an attention mechanism to allocate channel weights (AMACW). The model gets the correlation among channels by learning from good channel data. Interpolation assigns weights based on learned correlations without the need for electrode location information, solving the difficulty that traditional methods cannot interpolate bad channels at unknown locations. To avoid an overly concentrated weight distribution of the model when generating data, we designed the channel masking (CM). This method spreads attention and allows the model to utilize data from multiple channels. We evaluate the reconstruction performance of the model using EEG data with 1 to 5 bad channels. With EEGLAB’s interpolation method as a performance reference, tests have shown that the AMACW models can effectively reconstruct bad channels.