LIBS: a low-cost in-ear bioelectrical sensing solution for healthcare applications

Abstract

Bioelectrical signals representing electrical activities of human brain, eyes, and facial muscles have found widespread use both as important inputs for critical medical issues and as an invisible communication pathway between human and external devices. However, existing techniques for measuring those biosignals require attaching electrodes on the face and do not come in handy sizes for daily usage. Additionally, no study has been capable of providing all three biosignals with high fidelity simultaneously. In this paper, we present a low-cost bioelectrical sensing system, called LIBS, that can robustly collect the biosignal of good quality from inside human ears and extract all those three fundamental biosignals without loss of information. The practicality of LIBS is shown through one real world scenario of a sleep quality monitoring system. Based on preliminary results, we further propose potential healthcare applications utilizing the sensor's outputs for our future research.