DOC: Add epoch quality example

doc/changes/dev/13710.newfeature.rst

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Add a preprocessing example showing how to explore epoch quality before rejection using robust statistics (peak-to-peak amplitude, variance, and kurtosis) inspired by FASTER (Nolan et al., 2010) and Delorme et al. (2007), by `Aman Srivastava`_.

doc/references.bib

@@ -25,6 +25,27 @@ @article{GramfortEtAl2013a
   number = {267}
 }
 % everything else
+@article{NolanEtAl2010,
+  author  = {Nolan, H. and Whelan, R. and Reilly, R. B.},
+  title   = {{FASTER}: Fully Automated Statistical Thresholding for {EEG} artifact Rejection},
+  journal = {Journal of Neuroscience Methods},
+  year    = {2010},
+  volume  = {192},
+  number  = {1},
+  pages   = {152--162},
+  doi     = {10.1016/j.jneumeth.2010.07.015},
+}
+
+@article{DelormeEtAl2007,
+  author  = {Delorme, A. and Sejnowski, T. and Makeig, S.},
+  title   = {Enhanced detection of artifacts in {EEG} data using higher-order statistics and independent component analysis},
+  journal = {NeuroImage},
+  year    = {2007},
+  volume  = {34},
+  number  = {4},
+  pages   = {1443--1449},
+  doi     = {10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.11.004},
+}
 @article{AblinEtAl2018,
   author = {Ablin, Pierre and Cardoso, Jean-Francois and Gramfort, Alexandre},
   doi = {10.1109/TSP.2018.2844203},

examples/preprocessing/plot_epoch_quality.py

@@ -0,0 +1,106 @@
+"""
+.. _ex-epoch-quality:
+
+=====================================
+Exploring epoch quality before rejection
+=====================================
+
+Before rejecting epochs with :meth:`mne.Epochs.drop_bad`, it can be useful
+to get a sense of which epochs are the most likely artifacts. This example
+shows how to compute simple per-epoch statistics — peak-to-peak amplitude,
+variance, and kurtosis — and use them to rank epochs by their outlier score.
+
+The approach is inspired by established methods in the EEG artifact detection
+literature, namely FASTER :footcite:t:`NolanEtAl2010` and
+:footcite:t:`DelormeEtAl2007`, both of which use z-scored kurtosis and
+variance across epochs to flag bad trials.
+"""
+# Authors: Aman Srivastava
+#
+# License: BSD-3-Clause
+# Copyright the MNE-Python contributors.
+
+# %%
+import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
+import numpy as np
+
+import mne
+from mne.datasets import sample
+
+print(__doc__)
+
+data_path = sample.data_path()
+
+# %%
+# Load the sample dataset and create epochs
+meg_path = data_path / "MEG" / "sample"
+raw_fname = meg_path / "sample_audvis_filt-0-40_raw.fif"
+
+raw = mne.io.read_raw_fif(raw_fname, preload=True)
+events = mne.find_events(raw, "STI 014")
+
+event_id = {"auditory/left": 1, "auditory/right": 2}
+tmin, tmax = -0.2, 0.5
+picks = mne.pick_types(raw.info, meg="grad", eeg=False)
+
+epochs = mne.Epochs(
+    raw, events, event_id, tmin, tmax, picks=picks, preload=True, baseline=(None, 0)
+)
+
+# %%
+# Compute per-epoch statistics
+# We compute three features for each epoch:
+# - Peak-to-peak amplitude (sensitive to large jumps)
+# - Variance (sensitive to sustained high-amplitude noise)
+# - Kurtosis (sensitive to spike artifacts)
+#
+# Each feature is z-scored robustly using median absolute deviation (MAD)
+# across epochs, then averaged into a single outlier score per epoch.
+
+data = epochs.get_data()  # (n_epochs, n_channels, n_times)
+
+# Feature 1: peak-to-peak
+ptp = np.ptp(data, axis=-1).mean(axis=-1)
+
+# Feature 2: variance
+var = data.var(axis=-1).mean(axis=-1)
+
+# Feature 3: kurtosis
+from scipy.stats import kurtosis  # noqa: E402
+
+kurt = np.array([kurtosis(data[i].ravel()) for i in range(len(data))])
+
+# Robust z-score using MAD
+features = np.column_stack([ptp, var, kurt])
+median = np.median(features, axis=0)
+mad = np.median(np.abs(features - median), axis=0) + 1e-10
+z = np.abs((features - median) / mad)
+
+# Normalize to [0, 1]
+raw_score = z.mean(axis=-1)
+scores = (raw_score - raw_score.min()) / (raw_score.max() - raw_score.min() + 1e-10)
+
+# %%
+# Plot the scores ranked from cleanest to noisiest
+fig, ax = plt.subplots(layout="constrained")
+sorted_idx = np.argsort(scores)
+ax.bar(np.arange(len(scores)), scores[sorted_idx], color="steelblue")
+ax.axhline(0.8, color="red", linestyle="--", label="Example threshold (0.8)")
+ax.set(
+    xlabel="Epoch (sorted by score)",
+    ylabel="Outlier score",
+    title="Epoch quality scores (0 = clean, 1 = likely artifact)",
+)
+ax.legend()
+
+# %%
+# Inspect the worst epochs
+# Epochs scoring above 0.8 are worth inspecting manually
+bad_epochs = np.where(scores > 0.8)[0]
+print(f"Epochs worth inspecting: {bad_epochs}")
+print(f"That's {len(bad_epochs)} out of {len(epochs)} total epochs")
+
+# %%
+# References
+# ----------
+# .. footbibliography::