The goal: 20 years after the beginning of research in the field of direct brain-computer communication there should be a BCI system for those who need it: the patients!
The solution: intendiX® is designed to be installed and operated by caregivers or the patient’s family at home. The system is based on visually evoked EEG potentials (VEP/P300) and enables the user to sequentially select characters from a keyboard-like matrix on the screen just by paying attention to the target for several seconds. This requires some training but most subjects can use intendiX® after only 10 minutes with a reasonable performance: A spelling rate of 5 to 10 characters per minute can be achieved by the majority of healthy users at their first trial.
intendiX® uses an intelligent algorithm to detect the idling state so that the system only selects characters when the user pays attention to the system. Besides writing a text the patient can also use the system to trigger an alarm, let the computer speak the written text, print out or copy the text into an e-mail or to send commands to external devices. The special EEG cap is comfortable to wear and easy to clean and the active electrodes do not require any special skin preparation. Just put on the cap, inject a drip of gel into each of the electrodes and start to spell! intendiX® includes the active electrode system, a portable EEG acquisition system and a notebook or netbook computer with the intendiX® software installed.
For severely handicapped persons and patients close to the “locked-in state” the performance of such a BCI system depends on various factors such as training, visual faculty, concentrativeness and cortical degeneration.