Luan Bo, Jia Wenyan, Thirumala Parthasarathy D, Balzer Jeffrey, Gao Di, Sun Mingui
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Int Conf Signal Process Proc. 2014 Oct;2014:2282-2285. doi: 10.1109/ICOSP.2014.7015401.
The electroencephalography (EEG) is a widely used diagnostic tool for a number of clinical applications, such as diagnosis of epilepsy and study of sleep. Traditionally, to acquire a single channel of EEG signal, at least three electrodes must be installed on the skin separated at certain distances. They must also be connected to an amplifier by electrode leads. These basic requirements are acceptable in most clinical laboratories, but are unacceptable in certain point-of-care applications, such as during patient transportation. In order to remove these requirements, we are designing a single-unit EEG sensor in the size of a U.S. penny. It contains multiple closely spaced dry electrodes that can hook onto the skin, an electronic circuitry for signal amplification, digitization and wireless transmission, and a battery providing power. In this paper, we answer two key questions regarding the feasibility of the single-unit design: 1) can the closely-spaced electrodes obtain EEG signal reliably? and 2) will the electrodes orientated in certain ways improve signal quality? We conducted experiments utilizing closely spaced electrodes to record the alpha wave in the EEG. Our results have shown positive answers to the two feasibility questions.
脑电图（EEG）是一种广泛应用于多种临床应用的诊断工具，如癫痫诊断和睡眠研究。传统上，要获取单通道EEG信号，至少必须在皮肤上安装三个以一定距离分开的电极。它们还必须通过电极导线连接到放大器。这些基本要求在大多数临床实验室中是可以接受的，但在某些即时护理应用中是不可接受的，例如在患者转运期间。为了消除这些要求，我们正在设计一种尺寸如美国一分硬币大小的单单元EEG传感器。它包含多个紧密间隔的可钩在皮肤上的干电极、用于信号放大、数字化和无线传输的电子电路以及提供电力的电池。在本文中，我们回答了关于单单元设计可行性的两个关键问题：1）紧密间隔的电极能否可靠地获取EEG信号？以及2）以特定方式定向的电极是否会提高信号质量？我们利用紧密间隔的电极进行实验来记录EEG中的阿尔法波。我们的结果对这两个可行性问题给出了肯定的答案。
