Portable single-channel NIRS-based BMI system for motor disabilities' communication tools.

A portable near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) -based brain-machine Interface (BMI) system featuring single-channel probe, BMI controller and Infrared-emission apparatus was developed. As a switching technology for external devices, the threshold logic was proposed, which detects the blood volume change in the operator's frontal lobe. Experiments showed that the operator was able to change the TV programs or get forward the toy robot within 16 s (the mean is 11.77 s and the standard deviation is 2.35 s) after the mental calculation. In addition, the menu selection program was proposed for motor disabilities and the preliminary test showed that he could successively select the sentence from several candidates. It was shown that this system would provide the external device's control capabilities for motor disabilities.