A Robust Low-Cost EEG Motor Imagery-Based Brain-Computer Interface

Motor imagery (MI) based Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are a viable option for giving locked-in syndrome patients independence and communicability. BCIs comprising expensive medical-grade EEG systems evaluated in carefully-controlled, artificial environments are impractical for take-home use. Previous studies evaluated low-cost systems; however, performance was suboptimal or inconclusive. Here we evaluated a low-cost EEG system, OpenBCI, in a natural environment and leveraged neurofeedback, deep learning, and wider temporal windows to improve performance. μ-rhythm data collected over the sensorimotor cortex from healthy participants performing relaxation and right-handed MI tasks were used to train a multi-layer perceptron binary classifier using deep learning. We showed that our method outperforms previous OpenBCI MI-based BCIs, thereby extending the BCI capabilities of this low-cost device.