Tutorial - Marco Nalin

EEG is traditionally used in medicine as a diagnostic tool for some neurological disorders, including epilepsy, brain tumor, strokes, brain damages, etc. However, in recent years many research works have proven that EEG can be used also for innovative applications, including (but not limiting to) Brain Computer/Machine Interfaces (including robotic artifacts), neurofeedback training and mindfulness exercises, mood/emotion recognition and assessment, patient engagement monitoring. Despite the huge amount of work, such applications of EEG in real life are still significantly limited by the complexity of the setup of an EEG, creating a gap between the research domain and the existence of products on the market. Some solutions appeared, but many of them are not certified medical devices, thus limiting the acceptance from healthcare professionals.

Ab medica offers a wireless wearable EEG monitor, called Helmate, working with dry electrodes. Helmate provides data from 8 channels (sampling at 512 or 1024Hz), which can be configured in 10 different positions compatible with the 10/20 standard. The device is also CE certified as medical device in class IIA, including the compliance with the IEC 60601-1-11, which allows for the device to be used in home environment. Thanks to its characteristics, the device can be setup in a few minutes and be used in real life conditions, without the limitations of being connected to a computer through cables or the need to wear a backpack to carry the amplifier.

The tutorial will demonstrate the use of the device, the processing, tagging and filtering of the signal, and the extraction of the data stream in real time, for integration with external softwares.

Marco received his M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering at the University of Padova, Italy, in 2005. From 2004 to 2012 he worked at San Raffaele Hospital, in the "e-Services for Life and Health" department. From 2013 to 2020 he worked as Program Manager in the R&D department of the telemedicine company Telbios, in Milan. His role was cooperating and coordinating several tele-medicine related projects, mostly funded by the European Commission. Since December 2020 he’s Program Manager in the R&D team of ab medica. His research interests include personal health systems, mobile health, neuroscience, wellbeing and disease prevention, cognitive robotics and edutainment, surgery robotics, cloud computing, privacy and security.