A clinical evaluation of non-invasive motor imagery-based brain-computer interface in stroke

This clinical study investigates whether the performance of hemiparetic stroke patients operating a non-invasive Motor Imagery-based Brain-Computer Interface (MI-BCI) is comparable to healthy subjects. The study is performed on 8 healthy subjects and 35 BCI-naïve hemiparetic stroke patients. This study also investigates whether the performance of the stroke patients in operating MI-BCI correlates with the extent of neurological disability. The performance is objectively computed from the 10 x 10-fold cross-validation accuracy of employing the Filter Bank Common Spatial Pattern (FBCSP) algorithm on their EEG measurements. The neurological disability is subjectively estimated using the Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) of the upper extremity. The results show that the performance of BCI-naïve hemiparetic stroke patients is comparable to healthy subjects, and no correlation is found between the accuracy of their performance and their motor impairment in terms of FMA.