A Portable Brain-Computer Interface Platform for EEG Acquisition and Decoding
Payam Heydari2017, IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering
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Abstract
Conventional brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are often expensive, complex to operate, and lack portability, which confines their use to laboratory settings. Portable, inexpensive BCIs can mitigate these problems, but it remains unclear whether their low-cost design compromises their performance. Therefore, we developed a portable, low-cost BCI and compared its performance to that of a conventional BCI. The BCI was assembled by integrating a custom electroencephalogram (EEG) amplifier with an open-source microcontroller and a touchscreen. The function of the amplifier was first validated against a commercial bioamplifier, followed by a head-to-head comparison between the custom BCI (using 4 EEG channels) and a conventional 32-channel BCI. Specifically, 5 able-bodied subjects were cued to alternate between hand opening/closing and remaining motionless while the BCI decoded their movement state in real-time and provided visual feedback through a light emitting diode. Subjects repeated...
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