A wearable electronic system for EEG recording

The past decade has been characterized by an impressive surge of wearable electronics devices for biopotential recording applications. Due to its important potential impact, the recording of EEG (electroencephalography) signals recently raised considerable interest within this new paradigm of human-electronics interfacing. Ideally, this application would require minimally-invasive wearable acquisition devices and highly comfortable recording electrodes, two important and complex features that have not been completely resolved. The main problems concerning the implementation of a wearable electronic system for EEG recordings are thus related, on one hand, to the processing/acquisition electronic board and, on the other hand, to the employed acquisition electrodes and their contact with the skin. In particular, the readout electronics for this application should be low-power and possibly easy to integrate in a wearable system, while the electrodes should be as imperceptible as possible, thus allowing comfortable long-term acquisitions. With the intent of providing an efficient solution to both issues, we propose a a very low size and weight (13x15x2cm, 46g), low power, with estimated battery duration of 28h, wearable electronic system for EEG monitoring that has been preliminary validated by the means of ultra-conformable epidermal electrodes.