Evaluation of an online SSVEP-BCI with fast system setup

Abstract

The brain–computer interface (BCI) plays an important role in neural restoration. Current BCI systems generally require complex experimental preparation to perform well, but this time-consuming process may hinder their use in clinical applications. To explore the feasibility of simplifying the BCI system setup, a wearable BCI system based on the steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) was developed and evaluated. Fifteen healthy participants were recruited to test the fast-setup system using dry and wet electrodes in a real-life scenario. In this study, the average system setup time for the dry electrode was 38.40 seconds and that for the wet electrode was 103.40 seconds, which are times appreciably shorter than those in previous BCI experiments, enabling a rapid setup of the BCI system. Although the electroencephalogram (EEG) signal quality was low in this fast-setup BCI experiment, the BCI system achieved an information transfer rate of 138.89 bits/min with an eight-channel wet electrode and an information transfer rate of 70.59 bits/min with an eight-channel dry electrode, showing that the overall performance was close to that in traditional experiments. In addition, the results suggest that the solutions of a multi-channel dry electrode or few-channel wet electrode may be suitable for the fast-setup SSEVP-BCI. This fast-setup SSVEP-BCI has the advantages of simple preparation and stable performance and is thus conducive to promoting the use of the BCI in clinical practice.