MetaBCI: An open-source platform for brain-computer interfaces

Jie Mei; Ruixin Luo; Lichao Xu; Wei Zhao; Shengfu Wen; Kun Wang; Xiaolin Xiao; Jiayuan Meng; Yongzhi Huang; Jiabei Tang; Longlong Cheng; Minpeng Xu; Dong Ming

doi:10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107806

MetaBCI: An open-source platform for brain-computer interfaces

Comput Biol Med. 2024 Jan:168:107806. doi: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107806. Epub 2023 Dec 4.

Authors

Jie Mei¹, Ruixin Luo², Lichao Xu³, Wei Zhao⁴, Shengfu Wen³, Kun Wang⁵, Xiaolin Xiao⁶, Jiayuan Meng⁶, Yongzhi Huang⁵, Jiabei Tang⁷, Longlong Cheng⁸, Minpeng Xu⁹, Dong Ming⁶

Affiliations

¹ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: chmeijie@tju.edu.cn.
² Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: ruixin_luo@tju.edu.cn.
³ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China.
⁵ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-computer Interaction and Human-machine Integration, Tianjin, 300392, People's Republic of China.
⁶ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-computer Interaction and Human-machine Integration, Tianjin, 300392, People's Republic of China.
⁷ Haihe Laboratory of Brain-computer Interaction and Human-machine Integration, Tianjin, 300392, People's Republic of China; Tiankai Suishi (Tianjin) Intelligence Ltd., Tianjin, 300192, People's Republic of China.
⁸ China Electronics Cloud Brain (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd., Tianjin, 300392, People's Republic of China.
⁹ Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronics Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People's Republic of China; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-computer Interaction and Human-machine Integration, Tianjin, 300392, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: xmp52637@tju.edu.cn.

PMID: 38081116
DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2023.107806

Abstract

Background: Recently, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have attracted worldwide attention for their great potential in clinical and real-life applications. To implement a complete BCI system, one must set up several links to translate the brain intent into computer commands. However, there is not an open-source software platform that can cover all links of the BCI chain.

Method: This study developed a one-stop open-source BCI software, namely MetaBCI, to facilitate the construction of a BCI system. MetaBCI is written in Python, and has the functions of stimulus presentation (Brainstim), data loading and processing (Brainda), and online information flow (Brainflow). This paper introduces the detailed information of MetaBCI and presents four typical application cases.

Results: The results showed that MetaBCI was an extensible and feature-rich software platform for BCI research and application, which could effectively encode, decode, and feedback brain activities.

Conclusions: MetaBCI can greatly lower the BCI's technical threshold for BCI beginners and can save time and cost to build up a practical BCI system. The source code is available at https://github.com/TBC-TJU/MetaBCI, expecting new contributions from the BCI community.

Keywords: Brain–computer interface; Electroencephalogram; One-stop platform; Open-source; Python.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Brain
Brain Mapping
Brain-Computer Interfaces*
Electroencephalography / methods
Software