Validation of portable, semi-dry electrode-based electroencephalography device for its application in brain–computer interface solutions

In recent years, commercial lightweight electroencephalography (EEG) headsets are gaining popularity in neuroscience. These devices commonly utilize only a few dry electrodes in specific locations and signal quality is often inferior compared to that of their traditional counterparts. In this study, we wanted to assess the feasibility of portable, paste-less, passive electrode-based EEG headset MindRove vision (VSN) for laboratory use. Three paradigms were implemented for acquiring visual evoked potential (VEP), P300 event-related potential and motor execution task (ME) related cortical patterns. Measurements were taken by using VSN, with wet-electrode system mBrainTrain SMARTING applied as reference. The performance of the devices was assessed by using signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for VEP and P300 while support vector machine, random forest and convolutional neural network-based classifiers were fit to ME data. The SNRdB (i.e. SNR expressed in decibels) of VSN was greater for both VEP and P300, by a margin of 1.998 and 2.845 dB, respectively. There was a significant difference between VEP signal amplitude levels and SNRdB, P300 SNR and SNRdB in favor of VSN. Average accuracy of the sorters were 78.8% for VSN and 80.9% for SMARTING; the difference was not significant. The application of VSN is feasible for use in research besides qualitative exploration.