Cost-efficient and Custom Electrode-holder Assembly Infrastructure for EEG Recordings

Mobile electroencephalogram (EEG)-sensing technologies have rapidly progressed and made the access of neuroelectrical brain activity outside the laboratory in everyday life more realistic. However, most existing EEG headsets exhibit a fixed design, whereby its immobile montage in terms of electrode density and coverage inevitably poses a great challenge with applicability and generalizability to the fundamental study and application of the brain-computer interface (BCI). In this study, a cost-efficient, custom EEG-electrode holder infrastructure was designed through the assembly of primary components, including the sensor-positioning ring, inter-ring bridge, and bridge shield. It allows a user to (re)assemble a compact holder grid to accommodate a desired number of electrodes only to the regions of interest of the brain and iteratively adapt it to a given head size for optimal electrode-scalp contact and signal quality. This study empirically demonstrated its easy-to-fabricate nature by a low-end fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer and proved its practicability of capturing event-related potential (ERP) and steady-state visual-evoked potential (SSVEP) signatures over 15 subjects. This paper highlights the possibilities for a cost-efficient electrode-holder assembly infrastructure with replaceable montage, flexibly retrofitted in an unlimited fashion, for an individual for distinctive fundamental EEG studies and BCI applications.