Author:
Jérémy Frey
Affiliation:
Univ. Bordeaux and Inria, France
Keyword(s):
BCI, EEG, Amplifiers Comparison, P300 Speller, Workload Classification.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Biomedical Instruments and Devices
;
Biosignal Acquisition, Analysis and Processing
;
Brain-Computer Interfaces
;
Devices
;
Human-Computer Interaction
;
Methodologies and Methods
;
Physiological Computing Systems
Abstract:
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are promising communication devices between humans and machines. BCI
based on non-invasive neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) have many applications,
however the dissemination of the technology is limited, in part because of the price of the hardware. In
this paper we compare side by side two EEG amplifiers, the consumer grade OpenBCI and the medical grade
g.tec g.USBamp. For this purpose, we employed an original montage, based on the simultaneous recording of
the same set of electrodes. Two set of recordings were performed. During the first experiment a simple adapter
with a direct connection between the amplifiers and the electrodes was used. Then, in a second experiment,
we attempted to discard any possible interference that one amplifier could cause to the other by adding “ideal”
diodes to the adapter. Both spectral and temporal features were tested – the former with a workload monitoring
task, the latter with an visual P3
00 speller task. Overall, the results suggest that the OpenBCI board – or a
similar solution based on the Texas Instrument ADS1299 chip – could be an effective alternative to traditional
EEG devices. Even though a medical grade equipment still outperforms the OpenBCI, the latter gives very
close EEG readings, resulting in practice in a classification accuracy that may be suitable for popularizing BCI
uses.
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