The Design and Implementation of an Extensible Brain-Computer Interface

An implantable brain computer interface: BCI) includes tissue interface hardware, signal conditioning circuitry, analog-to-digital conversion: ADC) circuitry and some sort of computing hardware to discriminate desired waveforms from noise. Within an experimental paradigm the tissue interface and ADC hardware will rarely change. Recent literature suggests it is often the specific implementation of waveform discrimination that can limit the usefulness and lifespan of a particular BCI design. If the discrimination techniques are implemented in on-board software, experimenters gain a level of flexibility not currently available in published designs. To this end, I have developed a firmware library to acquire data sampled from an ADC, discriminate the signal for desired waveforms employing a user-defined function, and perform arbitrary tasks. I then used this design to develop an embedded BCI built upon the popular Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller platform. This system can operate on multiple channels simultaneously and is not fundamentally limited in the number of channels that can be processed. The resulting system represents a viable platform that can ease the design, development and use of BCI devices for a variety of applications.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Biomedical Engineering

Year dc:date.available

2010

Author dc:creator

• Burns, Scott

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dennis Barbour

• Brain-Computer Interface

Language dc:language

English (en)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7936/K7Z0365S

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:etd-1500