Analysis of tractable distortion metrics for EEG compression applications

Coding distortion in lossy electroencephalographic (EEG) signal compression methods is evaluated through tractable objective criteria. The percentage root-mean-square difference, which is a global and relative indicator of the quality held by reconstructed waveforms, is the most widely used criterion. However, this parameter does not ensure compliance with clinical standard guidelines that specify limits to allowable noise in EEG recordings. As a result, expert clinicians may have difficulties interpreting the resulting distortion of the EEG for a given value of this parameter. Conversely, the root-mean-square error is an alternative criterion that quantifies distortion in understandable units. In this paper, we demonstrate that the root-mean-square error is better suited to control and to assess the distortion introduced by compression methods. The experiments conducted in this paper show that the use of the root-mean-square error as target parameter in EEG compression allows both clinicians and scientists to infer whether coding error is clinically acceptable or not at no cost for the compression ratio. (paper)