Comparison of an Open-hardware Electroencephalography Amplifier with Medical Grade Device in Brain-computer Interface Applications

Jérémy Frey

2016

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 P300 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.

References

  1. Hoffmann, U., Vesin, J., and Ebrahimi, T. (2006). Spatial filters for the classification of event-related potentials. In ESANN 7806.
  2. Ledoit, O. and Wolf, M. (2004). A well-conditioned estimator for large-dimensional covariance matrices. Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 88(2):365-411.
  3. Mühl, C., Jeunet, C., and Lotte, F. (2014). EEG-based workload estimation across affective contexts. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 8(8 JUN):1-15.
  4. Nijboer, F., van de Laar, B., Gerritsen, S., Nijholt, A., and Poel, M. (2015). Usability of Three Electroencephalogram Headsets for Brain-Computer Interfaces: A Within Subject Comparison. Interacting with Computers, 27(5):500-511.
  5. Ramoser, H., Müller-Gerking, J., and Pfurtscheller, G. (2000). Optimal spatial filtering of single trial EEG during imagined hand movement. IEEE Trans Rehabil Eng, 8(4):441-446.
  6. Tan, D. S. and Nijholt, A. (2010). Brain-Computer Interfaces: Applying Our Minds to Human-Computer Interaction. Springer.
  7. Tautan, A.-M., Serdijn, W., Mihajlovic, V., Grundlehner, B., and Penders, J. (2013). Framework for evaluating EEG signal quality of dry electrode recordings. 2013 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS), pages 186-189.
  8. Wolpaw, J. R., Birbaumer, N., McFarland, D. J., Pfurtscheller, G., and Vaughan, T. M. (2002). Braincomputer interfaces for communication and control. Clin. Neurophysiol., 113(6):767-91.
  9. Zander, T. O. and Kothe, C. (2011). Towards passive braincomputer interfaces: applying brain-computer interface technology to human-machine systems in general. J. Neural. Eng, 8(2):025005.
  10. Zander, T. O., Lehne, M., Ihme, K., Jatzev, S., Correia, J., Kothe, C., Picht, B., and Nijboer, F. (2011). A Dry EEG-System for Scientific Research and Brain-Computer Interfaces. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 5(May):1-10.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Frey J. (2016). Comparison of an Open-hardware Electroencephalography Amplifier with Medical Grade Device in Brain-computer Interface Applications . In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems - Volume 1: PhyCS, ISBN 978-989-758-197-7, pages 105-114. DOI: 10.5220/0005954501050114


in Bibtex Style

@conference{phycs16,
author={Jérémy Frey},
title={Comparison of an Open-hardware Electroencephalography Amplifier with Medical Grade Device in Brain-computer Interface Applications},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems - Volume 1: PhyCS,},
year={2016},
pages={105-114},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005954501050114},
isbn={978-989-758-197-7},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems - Volume 1: PhyCS,
TI - Comparison of an Open-hardware Electroencephalography Amplifier with Medical Grade Device in Brain-computer Interface Applications
SN - 978-989-758-197-7
AU - Frey J.
PY - 2016
SP - 105
EP - 114
DO - 10.5220/0005954501050114