Treating Electrical and Biopotential Artifacts in an EEG Pilot Study Experiment.

With the increase in life expectancy, as well as in the performance and complexity of healthcare systems, the need for fast and accurate information has also grown. EEG devices have become more accessible and necessary in clinical practice. In daily activity, artifacts are ubiquitous in EEG signals. They arise from: environmental, experimental and physiological factors, degrade signal quality and render the affected part of the signal useless. This paper proposes an artifact cleaning pipeline including filters and algorithms to streamline the analysis process. Moreover, to better characterize and discriminate artifacts from useful EEG data, additional physiological signals and video data are used, which are correlated with subject's behavior. We quantify the performance reached by Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio and clinical visual inspection. The entire research and data collection took place in the laboratories of XPERI Corporation.Clinical Relevance-Since the occurrence of artifacts cannot be controlled, it is essential to have a precise process of recognition, identification and elimination of noise. Therefore, it is important to distinguish EEG artifacts from abnormal activity in order to minimize the chance of EEG misinterpretation, that can lead to false diagnosis, especially regarding the study of epileptiform activities or other neurologic or psychiatric disorders (e.g. degenerative diseases, dementia, depression, sleep disorders, Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, etc.).