In-ear-EEG - a portable platform for home monitoring

There are many useful medical treatment devices today, which are indispensable in health care. However, in some emergency situations and in prehospital care mobile, easy-to-use devices could further improve the patient-centred care. For example, a mobile, easy-to-use home-monitoring EEG-system would be useful for monitoring diseases like epilepsy and for treating diseases like attention deficit disorder (ADHD) using biofeedback. Such a device should be equipped with the ability to start self-performed by user recordings and provide high signal quality, while having an affordable price. Here, we used in-ear-EEG technology and state of the art electronic components to develop such a system. This paper presents a portable, all-in-one EEG-system, capable to record biosignals on the external ear. An amplifier was developed with ADS1299 and optimised to be coupled with a smartphone. The system has a low price and at the same time provides high signal quality, has very effective common-mode-rejection, performs a fast cold start and shows low power consumptions which ensures a long time of operation. The system is easy to use and could be self-mounted and controlled by unskilled users as well. Results of test measurements are compared to a conventional EEG-System and show comparable records results quality.