An Immersive P300 Brain–Computer Interface Based on 3D Morphological Stimuli and Self-Adaptive Bayesian Linear Discriminant Analysis

Conventional P300-based brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) commonly rely on two-dimensional (2D) visual flashing, which may induce visual fatigue and limit immersion, thereby restricting long-term usability and system performance. To address these limitations, this study proposes an immersive P300-BCI framework integrating a three-dimensional morphological stimulation paradigm, termed 3D-Morph, with self-adaptive Bayesian linear discriminant analysis (SA-BLDA). Instead of using color or luminance flickering, the proposed paradigm employs dynamic 2D-to-3D morphological transformations of virtual objects in a virtual reality environment to enhance target-related event-related potentials while preserving visual immersion. SA-BLDA further adjusts the number of stimulation rounds according to classification confidence to balance accuracy and interaction efficiency. Experiments with 24 participants showed that the proposed system outperformed the conventional 2D paradigm. In offline analysis, the proposed method achieved an average classification accuracy of 94.17% and an information transfer rate (ITR) of 25.50 bits/min, significantly outperforming the 2D paradigm (87.29% accuracy, 22.75 bits/min ITR, both $p<0.001$, Cohen’s $d\ge 1.22$). In online experiments, the 3D-Morph paradigm achieved an average accuracy of 91.46% and an ITR of 37.23 bits/min, compared with 83.96% and 28.74 bits/min for the conventional 2D paradigm (both $p<0.01$, Cohen’s $d\ge 1.14$). The average response time was reduced by 0.46 s ($p<0.01$, Cohen’s $d=0.78$), and the processing time per stimulation round (PT) of SA-BLDA was significantly reduced from $48.54\pm 10.47$ ms in the 2D paradigm to $26.40\pm 9.41$ ms in the 3D-Morph paradigm ($p<0.01$, Cohen’s $d=2.34$), corresponding to a 45.61% reduction in computational time per round. NASA-TLX evaluations indicated a significantly lower subjective workload across all dimensions (all $p<0.05$, Cohen’s $d\ge 0.76$). These results demonstrate that combining 3D-Morph stimulation with SA-BLDA can significantly improve classification performance, interaction efficiency, and user experience, providing a feasible framework for immersive and practical P300-BCI applications.