Spike Detection Based on the Adaptive Time–Frequency Analysis

This paper presents a novel spike detection algorithm in nonstationary signals using a time–frequency (t–f) approach. The proposed algorithm exploits the direction of signal energy in the t–f domain to detect spikes in the presence of high-frequency nonstationary signals even at low signal-to-noise ratio. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated using synthetic nonstationary signals, synthesized signals mimicking electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, manually selected segments of speech signals, and manually selected segments of real EEG signals. The statistical measures, such as hit rate and precision, are used to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm performs better than other widely used algorithms, such as the smoothed nonlinear energy detector.