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Phase Detection of Visual Evoked Potentials Applied to Brain Computer Interfacing

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Towards Practical Brain-Computer Interfaces

Part of the book series: Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering ((BIOMEDICAL))

Abstract

Brain computer interfaces (BCI) that use the steady-state-visual-evoked-potential (SSVEP) as a neural source are very promising communication restoration technologies because they require shorter calibration and can yield higher information transfer rates compared to BCIs based on other neural sources. SSVEPs elicited by high frequency (higher than 30 Hz) repetitive visual stimulation are more comfortable, safer, and less prone to cause visual fatigue. However, there is a practical limitation in the high frequency range, because only a few frequencies can be used for BCI purposes. This limitation can be overcome by using repetitive visual stimuli having the same frequency but different phases. Detecting the phase of the SSVEP from the electroencephalogram is possible through a convenient signal processing approach which concatenates spatial filtering and phase synchrony analysis. This approach is illustrated with an actual BCI implementation which was tested on 15 participants and resulted on an average bit rate of 33.2 bits-per minute and an average accuracy of 92 %. These results are comparable to state-of-the-art SSVEP-BCI performance. In this approach, however, the user experiences minimal annoyance from attending to visual stimulation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Dr. Vojkan Mihajlovic for his valuable suggestions to improve the quality of this chapter.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement number 224156.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philips Research North-America, Madison, WI, USA

    Gary Garcia-Molina

  2. College of Biomedical Engineering and Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Danhua Zhu

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  1. Gary Garcia-Molina
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Correspondence to Gary Garcia-Molina .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Baltimore Drive 5700Apt 167, La Mesa, 91942, California, USA

    Brendan Z. Allison

  2. Starlab Neuroscience Research, Teodor Roviralta 45, Barcelona, 08022, Spain

    Stephen Dunne

  3. , School of Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EPFL STI-CNBI, ELB 141, Station 11, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland

    Robert Leeb

  4. , School of Engineering, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, EPFL STI-CNBI, ELB 138. Station 11, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland

    José Del R. Millán

  5. , Faculty EEMCS, University of Twente, Enschede, 7500, Netherlands

    Anton Nijholt

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Garcia-Molina, G., Zhu, D. (2012). Phase Detection of Visual Evoked Potentials Applied to Brain Computer Interfacing. In: Allison, B., Dunne, S., Leeb, R., Del R. Millán, J., Nijholt, A. (eds) Towards Practical Brain-Computer Interfaces. Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29746-5_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29746-5_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29745-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29746-5

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