Implementation of a Motor Imagery Based BCI System Using Python Programming Language

At present, there is a wide variety of free open-source brain-computer interface (BCI) software. Even though the available software is very complete, it often runs under a Matlab environment. Matlab is a high performance language for scientific computing, but its limitations concerning the license cost, the restricted access to the algorithm code, and the portability difficulties complicates its use. Therefore, we proposed to implement a motor imagery (MI) based BCI system using Python programming language. This system was called miBCI software, was designed to discriminate up to three control tasks and was structured on the basis of online and offline data analyses. The functionality and efficiency of the software were firstly assessed in a pilot study, and then, its applicability and utility were demonstrated in two subsequent studies associated with the external and internal influences on MI-related control tasks. Results of the pilot study and preliminary outcomes of the subsequent studies are herein presented. This work contributes by promoting the utilization of tools which facilitate the advance of BCI research. The advantage of using Python instead of Matlab, which is the widely used programming language at the moment, is the opportunity to develop BCI software in a public and collaborative way, without property license restrictions.