Improve P300-speller performance by online tuning stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA)
Objective . The P300-Speller is a classic brain–computer interface paradigm that has been subjected
to numerous clinical trials. Some studies have reported that the performance of the P300-Speller is
closely related to stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), but very few studies have attempted to improve
the performance of the P300-Speller by optimizing SOA. Approach. In this paper, we designed a
P300-Speller system based on a variable SOA and dynamic stop strategy, which can automatically
adjust SOA according to real-time operational performance. Main results. The online experiment
results of 18 subjects showed that the event-related potential classifier and the dynamic stop
algorithm established at 200 ms SOA can maintain the performance at a certain level among 50–300 ms
SOA. The system can then reduce the SOA from an initial 200 ms to an average of about 98.5 ms while
maintaining letter output accuracy. The average theoretical information transfer rate was sign...