Ultrasound-based Brain-Computer Interface is a breakthrough technology.
Functional ultrasound (fUS) is the new way to make the functional BMI (Brain Machine Interface). The BMI is almost the same as BCI (Brain-Computer-Interface), where the controller uses a computer or machines using brain waves or some other details like brain area activation. The BCI can be BMI, but the main difference is in accuracy and methods of how the system detects the changes in brain activity.
The BMI is less sophisticated than BCI. The full-scale BCI allows to write to be created using EEG. The BMI must only move the hands or feet of robots. And that means BMI is easier to make because it requires less accurate information.
Normally, we can think that BCI is the keyboard. The operator is used by the EEG or some other method. If we want to control some machine, we can use it by using the keyboard. But that method is not very effective. For controlling machines, we have joysticks and VR gloves.
That allows us to see how brains are operating. That system requires very highly accurate systems. However, the BMI requires only information on what brain area and sub-area is activating.
The idea of the BMI is that the system searches the brain area activation. Another way to see what brain areas are activating is to follow the blood flow into certain brain areas. The system is easier to make than people think. The movements of the left hand come from certain brain areas in the right brain. And movement of the right hand comes from the left brain.
"The latest advancements in Brain-Machine Interfaces feature functional ultrasound (fUS), a non-invasive technique for reading brain activity. This innovation has shown promising results in controlling devices with minimal delay and without the need for frequent recalibration. Credit: SciTechDaily.com" (ScitechDaily.com/Mind Control Breakthrough: Caltech’s Pioneering Ultrasound Brain–Machine Interface)
Ultrasound-based BMI is the newest technology in non-surgical BMI. The ultasound systems detect changes in the brain blood flow in blood vessels. That thing allows the interface that be error-free in electromagnetic fields.
Regular BCI used MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) based systems. That makes them vulnerable to electromagnetic fields. Ultrasound-based 3D imaging systems also can detect changes in brain activity using ultrasound. And that thing is one step toward safe, easy-to-use, and non-surgical BMi systems. The accuracy of those systems that use the blood flow as the tool, and how to observe the changes in brain area activation is lower than EEG-based systems.
BMI doesn't require very high accuracy. But if the user wants to write texts or something like that the user needs virtual keyboards.
The virtual keyboard can be virtually very large. The BMI user can move the virtual robot hand on the screen. And that allows users to write things for computers.
The other user interfaces fill the BMI. The speech-to-commands applications allow us to give spoken commands to computers and robots. Sometimes noisy environments or non-certain speech cause trouble for computers to understand commands. And that requires the virtual keyboards.
But things like virtual keyboards and other kinds of tools can make this kind of system so accurate, that they are suitable for everyday work. The action-camera-based UI (User Interface) is a small media projector that projects images to the table. The system sees from the action camera which virtual button the user pushed.
The VR-based UI uses a virtual keyboard that the user sees in VR glasses. Then the user must only move their fingers on air. The system just positions finger movements to the virtual keyboard by connecting data from action cameras. The system makes calibration using a couple of static points. Then it asks the person to point a finger on some letters. That kind of system can fill the BMI systems. And give it higher accuracy.
https://scitechdaily.com/mind-control-breakthrough-caltechs-pioneering-ultrasound-brain-machine-interface/
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