Performance Assessment of a Custom, Portable, and Low-Cost Brain-Computer Interface Platform

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering
• Computer Science

Background:

• Conventional brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are often expensive, complex, and lack portability, limiting their use to laboratory environments.
• The performance implications of low-cost, portable BCI designs remain largely uninvestigated.
• There is a need for accessible BCI solutions that can be utilized in real-world applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a portable, low-cost brain-computer interface (BCI).
• To compare the performance of the developed BCI against a conventional, high-density BCI system.
• To assess the feasibility of using low-cost BCIs outside of laboratory settings.

Main Methods:

• A portable BCI was constructed using a custom electroencephalogram (EEG) amplifier, an open-source microcontroller, and a touchscreen.
• The custom EEG amplifier's performance was validated against a commercial bioamplifier.
• A comparative study involved five able-bodied subjects performing a motor imagery task using both the custom 4-channel BCI and a conventional 32-channel BCI.

Main Results:

• EEG data from the custom and commercial amplifiers showed high correlation (ρ = 0.79), indicating similar signal quality.
• The decoding performance of the custom BCI (0.70 ± 0.12) was statistically comparable to the conventional BCI (0.68 ± 0.10).
• No significant difference in performance was observed between the portable, low-cost BCI and the conventional system.

Conclusions:

• The developed portable, low-cost BCI achieves performance levels comparable to conventional BCI systems.
• This technology is suitable for broader BCI applications beyond controlled laboratory environments.
• The findings suggest that accessible BCI platforms can be effectively deployed in real-world scenarios.