Objective evaluation of fatigue by EEG spectral analysis in steady-state visual evoked potential-based brain-computer interfaces

BioMedical Engineering OnLine

Teng Cao²  Feng Wan²  Chi Man Wong²  Janir Nuno da Cruz²  Yong Hu¹ 

[1] Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China

[2] Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Macau, Macau, China

关键词: Electroencephalography spectral analysis;    Steady-state visual evoked potential;    Brain-computer interfaces;    Objective evaluation;    Fatigue;   

Others  :  797131
DOI  :  10.1186/1475-925X-13-28

 received in 2013-12-17, accepted in 2014-03-05,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

The fatigue that users suffer when using steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can cause a number of serious problems such as signal quality degradation and system performance deterioration, users’ discomfort and even risk of photosensitive epileptic seizures, posing heavy restrictions on the applications of SSVEP-based BCIs. Towards alleviating the fatigue, a fundamental step is to measure and evaluate it but most existing works adopt self-reported questionnaire methods which are subjective, offline and memory dependent. This paper proposes an objective and real-time approach based on electroencephalography (EEG) spectral analysis to evaluate the fatigue in SSVEP-based BCIs.

Methods

How the EEG indices (amplitudes in δ, θ, α and β frequency bands), the selected ratio indices (θ/α and (θ + α)/β), and SSVEP properties (amplitude and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)) changes with the increasing fatigue level are investigated through two elaborate SSVEP-based BCI experiments, one validates mainly the effectiveness and another considers more practical situations. Meanwhile, a self-reported fatigue questionnaire is used to provide a subjective reference. ANOVA is employed to test the significance of the difference between the alert state and the fatigue state for each index.

Results

Consistent results are obtained in two experiments: the significant increases in α and (θ + α)/β, as well as the decrease in θ/α are found associated with the increasing fatigue level, indicating that EEG spectral analysis can provide robust objective evaluation of the fatigue in SSVEP-based BCIs. Moreover, the results show that the amplitude and SNR of the elicited SSVEP are significantly affected by users’ fatigue.

Conclusions

The experiment results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method as an objective and real-time evaluation of the fatigue in SSVEP-based BCIs. This method would be helpful in understanding the fatigue problem and optimizing the system design to alleviate the fatigue in SSVEP-based BCIs.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Cao et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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