Geodesic Optimization for Predictive Shift Adaptation on EEG data

Electroencephalography (EEG) data is often collected from diverse contexts involving different populations and EEG devices. This variability can induce distribution shifts in the data $X$ and in the biomedical variables of interest $y$, thus limiting the application of supervised machine learning (ML) algorithms. While domain adaptation (DA) methods have been developed to mitigate the impact of these shifts, such methods struggle when distribution shifts occur simultaneously in $X$ and $y$. As state-of-the-art ML models for EEG represent the data by spatial covariance matrices, which lie on the Riemannian manifold of Symmetric Positive Definite (SPD) matrices, it is appealing to study DA techniques operating on the SPD manifold. This paper proposes a novel method termed Geodesic Optimization for Predictive Shift Adaptation (GOPSA) to address test-time multi-source DA for situations in which source domains have distinct $y$ distributions. GOPSA exploits the geodesic structure of the Riemannian manifold to jointly learn a domain-specific re-centering operator representing site-specific intercepts and the regression model. We performed empirical benchmarks on the cross-site generalization of age-prediction models with resting-state EEG data from a large multi-national dataset (HarMNqEEG), which included $14$ recording sites and more than $1500$ human participants. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our results showed that GOPSA achieved significantly higher performance on three regression metrics ($R^2$, MAE, and Spearman's $\rho$) for several source-target site combinations, highlighting its effectiveness in tackling multi-source DA with predictive shifts in EEG data analysis. Our method has the potential to combine the advantages of mixed-effects modeling with machine learning for biomedical applications of EEG, such as multicenter clinical trials.

Paper

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Peer review

Reviewer r2hf7/10 · confidence 4/52024-07-06

Summary

This paper proposes a novel method, Geodesic Optimization for Predictive Shift Adaptation (GOPSA), for predictive regression modeling with multi-source domain adaptation. The proposed method employs a domain-specific re-centering operator and a regression model using EEG data for age prediction. The method is innovative.

Strengths

1. This paper proposes a novel riemannian-based solution with multi-source domain adaptation for a regression task. 2. Extensive experiments have been conducted, although only one dataset has been used. 3. I carefully checked the code and lemmas; the method, experimental design, stratified split (ensuring independence), and significance tests appear to be correct.

Weaknesses

1. This method assumes knowledge of the average value of the target label $\bar y_T$, which is problematic due to the potential information leakage from the test set. As stated in lines 146-149, the method relies solely on $\bar y_T$ for adjusting regression model predictions, making it difficult to evaluate the generalizability of the method on unseen data. 2. The paper does not compare the proposed method with other alignment techniques such as re-scale and rotation correction [1]. 3. There is no comparison with other Riemannian-based methods or state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for age prediction using M/EEG. 4. It may be inappropriate to claim 'achieved state-of-the-art performance' on a dataset without comparing it with other existing methods. [1] Mellot, Apolline, et al. "Harmonizing and aligning M/EEG datasets with covariance-based techniques to enhance predictive regression modeling." Imaging Neuroscience 1 (2023): 1-23.

Questions

The performance differences between the proposed GOPSA and the baseline, domain-aware (DO) intercept appear to be not large enough in several source-target site combinations. The T-test seems correct (100 repetitions per site combination). However, did you check the assumptions of the T-test: (1) whether the differences follow a normal distribution and (2) whether the variances are equal?

Rating

7

Confidence

4

Soundness

4

Presentation

4

Contribution

3

Limitations

Only one dataset was used in this study. Experiments on different datasets should be conducted to validate the generalizability of the method.

Reviewer ucmS7/10 · confidence 3/52024-07-11

Summary

This paper presents a method for tackling domain adaptation challenges in EEG data analysis, specifically addressing shifts in both the feature space (represented by SPD matrices) and outcome variables $y$. The proposed method is designed on top of Riemannian mixed-effects model and is tailored for regression problems. Also, a key highlight of the proposed method is its capability to generalize from the source domain to any target domain without the need for retraining.

Strengths

The paper is well-written at the beginning, with a clear introduction to concepts such as EEG data variability and its intuitive effect visualization, as in Figure 1. The paper provides clear theoretical foundations for establishing Riemannian geometry. The proposed method shows good performance improvement over baselines.

Weaknesses

* Motivation Clarity. My main concern is that the necessity of investigating domain adaptation (DA) methods on the SPD manifold is not convincingly presented. While SPD manifold representations are prevalent in EEG analysis, I did not see what specific issues were caused by domain shift. Or what unique issues does DA on the SPD manifold present that the proposed method wants to investigate and resolve? A clear problem setup is helpful for understanding the position of the research. * The proposed method is on top of a Riemannian mixed-effects model (lines 142-143), which has been used to tackle data shifts in $X$ and $y$ as introduced in Related work (lines 68-74). While the authors mention that there is an opposing setting in previous studies (lines 75-78), it is unclear which specific limitation this paper focuses on and what the challenge is. * The main characteristics/advantages of the proposed method are less explained. The paper overall explains very well about the derivation of the algorithm, but it is hard to understand the technical significance compared to existing methods and in what aspects it is better. While the work offers a thoughtful generalization of Riemannian mixed-effects model, it seems like it does not include any concepts that are wholly new. * It would be helpful to elaborate on why domain shifts occur in both the data and biomedical variables. A minor question is: Is this an EEG-specific issue or common in biomedical data?

Questions

Please refer to the weakness section.

Rating

7

Confidence

3

Soundness

3

Presentation

4

Contribution

2

Limitations

I understand this is a professional paper on EEG study. However, I am currently unclear about its overall significance, particularly regarding the motivation or research question for investigating DA methods on the SPD manifold. However, my final decision is open to change pending the authors' rebuttal and further discussions.

Reviewer N9Jm8/10 · confidence 4/52024-07-13

Summary

The authors proposed GOPSA a new approach for alignment of EEG datasets from multiple subjects and sites. The method respects the Riemannian manifold of the covariance matrices and learns the parallel transport length parameter simultaneously with the regression model used for solving the downstream task. While simple and intuitive the approach is well justified, rooted in the previous research and adequately evaluated using a large public EEG dataset and the associated age prediction task.

Strengths

1. The method is interesting, simple, uses few parameters and as the authors demonstrated efficient. 2. The method is well described with all necessary details to comprehend it and implement. 3. The dataset is large and comprehensive and extensive comparison with other relevant data alignment techniques is presented.

Weaknesses

1. No performance analysis on a simulated data 2. No interpretation of the obtained decision rule. 3. Table 1 - not all the difference in performance of GOPSA with the other competing techniques seem significant.

Questions

1. Could the authors provide some interpretation of the age prediction model? What frequency bands appear pivotal? Which electrodes? 2. Could the authors add the statistical test to Table 1? 3. Could the authors discuss and compare their approach against the technique used in several DL studies applied to the multisubject datasets when a specific subject adaptation trainable layer is used to interface his or her data with the "oracle" classification engine? 4. The authors use covariance matrices as features, however it seems that the transport learnt can be applied to the actual multichannel data directly - could the authors discuss this possibility in the light of forming large aligned datasets in the channel x time form rather than their covariance matrices?

Rating

8

Confidence

4

Soundness

3

Presentation

3

Contribution

3

Limitations

The authors adequately addressed the limitations of their study, see also Weaknesses section of this review.

Reviewer 85Rg8/10 · confidence 5/52024-07-13

Summary

This study presents an approach to learning robust models under joint shifts in X and y (an important issue in healthcare). Focusing on EEG signals, a covariance-matrix-based learning framework is developed to address this challenge. Empirical results on EEG-specific benchmarks demonstrate its overall efficacy.

Strengths

- Focus on a highly relevant and unaddressed problem in EEG data analysis. - The proposed solution is innovative (mixed effects modeling w/ representation learning) and scalable (it does not need model retraining or access to source data). - Clear technical exposition/prose.

Weaknesses

- Lack of discussion/comments on: 1) other relevant solutions for the same problem setting since joint shifts in X and y are an issue for many other biosignal modalities, 2) expected failure modes and future directions based on this approach.

Questions

- Q: Is the ComBat harmonization tool (used in imaging and genetics to correct batch effects) a relevant solution within the same problem setting? "ComBat is a batch adjustment method that removes additive and multiplicative differences between sites due to the use of different scanning devices" - https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/combat.enigma/index.html. - Q: What happens when source and target distributions for the response variable don't overlap or only partially? (regarding the choice made in line 238). - Q: What happens if we only have a bad/noisy estimate of the target domain's mean value (in practice)? Is there any intuition on how things would break?

Rating

8

Confidence

5

Soundness

4

Presentation

4

Contribution

4

Limitations

See weaknesses.

Reviewer 85Rg2024-08-12

Thank you authors for the rebuttal and taking the effort to run additional experiments. I think the points in this rebuttal and others would add value for readers in the discussion and future work sections of the final version. I maintain my initial recommendation.

Reviewer ucmS2024-08-12

Thank you to the authors for the response and efforts. The additional experiments improve the quality of the work and address my concerns. I am increasing my rating to 7 and hope that the motivation behind the study will be more clearly presented in the final version.

Reviewer r2hf2024-08-12

I would like to thank the authors for all the additional experiments and the effort they put into addressing most of my concerns, as well as those of the other reviewers. Although there was not enough time to include an additional dataset to further test the generalizability, I am willing to increase the rating from 5 to 7.

Program Chairsdecision2024-09-25

Decision

Accept (spotlight)

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