AMIT KUMAR B080540EC S7- ECE

What Is BCI ? BCI - communication channel through EOG & EMG signals. In situation of disease, there may be inability to communicate with others through means such as speech/typing . Eye movement tends to be one of the last remaining active muscle capability for people with neurodegenerative disorders, such as ALS. So, there is a need for eye movement based system to enable communication.

EEG SIGNAL :*Technical artifacts :- noise from electric power source. * biological artifacts :- (eye artifacts , ECG , EEG etc..). Eye blink is not an artifacts and is a control signal to select the block /char in the virtual keyboard . The kurtosis coefficient and amplitude characteristics are used to detect the control signal.

Armen R developed an EOG based system for computer control. This system is created to allow user to interact with a computer only by moving their eyes.

Ternary keyboard for electro-cular spelling interface.

Each successive eye movement command left , right and centre command . In this system, eye gaze direction is used to navigate a particular letter on the virtual screen keyboard & EMG signal click to navigated letter. Eye gaze direction is obtained from EOG signal & the EMG signal is recorded from the eyebrow of the user . We got this idea from who developed EMG based HANDS-FREE WHEELCHAIR control with EOG attention shift detection. They used the EOG signal for speed control of the wheelchair and the EMG to select a particular direction.

BCI A communication channel Mental activities leads to change of electrophysio -logical signals like the EEG. The BCI detects such changes and transforms it into a control signal which can be used to control a simple video game , motion of a wheelchair. The first step in developing an effective BCI paradigm is to determine suitable control signals from the EEG. A suitable control signal has the following attributes. * it can be precisely characterized . *it can be readily modulated /translated to express the intention. *It can be detect and tracked consistently& reliably. The EEG eye blink signals have all the above 3 attributes & hence can be used as a control signal .

EOG is a method for sensing eye movement and is based on recording the standing corneal-retinal potential arising from hyperpolarisations & depolarization existing b/w cornea & retina. The potential considered as steady electrical dipole with a ive pole at retina & +ive pole at cornea. Human eye is like a spherical battery that the centre of cornea is +ive & the retina is ive. The micro-current flow radially from the +ive pole to ive pole of the battery.

EOG RECORDING
The EOG is captured by 5 electrodes placed arround the eye. The EOG signals are obtained by placed 2 electrodes to the R &L of the eye(d-e) to detect horizontal movement & another pair above and below the eye(b-c) to detect vertical movement. A ref. electrode is placed on the forhead. EOG changes 20mV for each degree of eye movement.

EOG signal is a result of a number of factors, including -eyeball rotation & movement, eyelid movement, head movement. To design a ideal system , an high gain differential amp(1000-5000) is used , with HPF (Fc- 0.05Hz) & a LPF (Fc-35Hz) Ag-AgCl electrode (high impedence). & Si-rubber electrode (of impedence below 10K ohm). Low impedence range 40-200 ohm , the Si-rubber electrode is more suitable to sense the very low amplitude bio-signals as compared to other electrodes (Ag-AgCl).

It is a technique for evaluating and recording the electrical activity of eye brow muscle activity. EMG is recorded by using a small wearable device that acquires signal from the sensors on the headband . EMG IS detected b/w 70-1000KHz ,amplitude range is 10-100microV and freq range of DC 100Hz. EMG signals can be easily separated from the EOG signals using BPF

Eye blinks are characterized by peaks with relatively strong voltages . Eye blink classification based on duration -- Short blink blink duration < 200ms. -- Long blink blink duration >=200ms. Eye blink classified into 3 types: REFLEXIVE-the eyeblink reflexive is simplest response & doesnot require the involvement of cortical structures. VOLUNTARY- blinking due to predetermined condition.

SPONTANEOUS eye blinks occur without external stimuli specified & they are associated with psychophysiological state of the person . The kurtosis & amplitude characteristics of the eye blinks are used to detect the control signals .

The eye related signal will be predominent in the frontal & prefrontal regions of the brain . Peak in -ive regions shows an eye open event. & positive peak shows an eye close event. An eyeblink signal can be detected by its +ive &-ive peak occourance.

The EEG signal is stochastic & set of samples is called realizations/samples function x(t) . The expectation is mean of realisation & is c/d 1st order central momentum. 2nd order cental momentum is the variance . The sqrt of variance is the S.D, which measure the spread/dispersion arround the mean. The kurtosis , c/d 4th order central momentum ,characterize the relative flatness & peakness of the signal disturbance.

The

kurtosis coefficient of an event is high when there is an eye blink. eye event can be detected by kurtosis coefficient.

the process of selection of a letter from VSK. 1st of all the EOG signal is measured using EOG recording method . Then , the eye gaze angle is calculated from the EOG signal using an algorithm . When the curser reaches to the reqd letter , EMG signal is used to make click on the selected letter . EMG signal is used to make a click because its accuracy& clearance.

The EEG signal is acquired using Biopac MP36 system. The biopac disposable vinyl electrode (EL503)are placed on fp1&f3 region in the 10-20 international electrode system . The reference electrode is placed on the earlobe The lead SS2L connects the electrodes to channel (ch1)of MP36 system which is connected to computer. The CH1 of Biopac MP36 system is setup as EEG, 0.535Hz mode. In this mode gain of amp is 25000. 2 filters , a 0.5Hz HPF & 1KHz LPF are used .the sampling freq is set at 200 samples/sec.

Eyeblink are used as input/control signal in this BCI .the user has to produce an eyeblink in 5s time interval . The BCI detects in this 5s interval whether eyeblink is present or not. A single selection can be done in 20 s . In every 5s interval user should make an eyeblink . So in effect at the end of 20s interval BCI will detect one of the following event . Single eyeblink occurred Two eyeblink occurred Three eyeblink occurred

The entire alphabet(A-Z)& space characters are avialable in the VK. The total 27 character are divided into 3 blocks.

labVIEW is a powerfull GDE for signal acquisition , measurement analysis, & data presentation giving the flexibilty of a programming lang. without complexity of traditional development tools. 2 process * front panel * block diagram code . Front panel :- the front panel consist of 27 LEDs, one for each character. When the block/char is selected these LEDs glow .

The actual programming in labVIEW is the development of the block diagram. The block digram code describe the utility of a front panel object . In the block diagram various loop & structure re used to develop complex algorithms. A while loop in combination with a for loop & other functins calculates the kurtosis value .

This system is aimed towards development of a usable and low cost brain-computer interface for disabled and aged persons.

The BCI developed can be used for communication purposes, which use eye blinks as control signals, especially for patients those suffering from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
The Virtual Keyboard developed obtained a correct spelling rate of 1.00 character/min which is excellent. The spelling rate can be improved by reducing the time given to produce the eye blink.

Hari Singh Dhillon, Rajesh Singla, Navleen Singh Rekhi, Rameshwar Jha, EOG and EMG Based Virtual Keyboard: A Brain-Computer Interface, Dec 2009, pp 259-262.
Brijil Chambayil and Rajesh Singla, Virtual Keyboard BCI using Eye blinks in EEG, Nov 2010,pp 466-470.

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