Distributed inertial sensing and design of comfortable dry electrodes for real-time motion artifact reduction in wearable electroencephalography

The surgeon plays a complex role that requires a wide variety of skills and often long work hours. Among the most dangerous effects of sleep deprivation, a reduction in attention was shown by literature to affect surgeons. Methods to measure intraoperative cognitive performance are rarely used and must be objective since subjective methods may be influenced by the subject's judgment. Electroencephalogram (EEG) is an objective measure suitable to study brain activity during sleep deprivation. Unfortunately, the use of conventional EEG devices in this context is limited, as these systems are complex, bulky, costly and uncomfortable to wear. In addition, during the surgeon's movement, the EEG is contaminated with motion artifacts. The purpose of this study is to design a wearable, lightweight, motion tolerant EEG device, by developing dry flexible electrodes and strategies algorithm to reduce motion artifacts. The device is a lightweight headset that places flexible dry electrodes in the region around the ear to minimize invasiveness. In addition, the device embeds an inertial measurement unit placed on each electrode which collects electrode motion information used by the artifact reduction algorithm