Cortically-Coupled Computer Vision

We have developed EEG-based BCI systems which couple human vision and computer vision for speeding the search of large images and image/video databases. We term these types of BCI systems “cortically-coupled computer vision” (C3Vision). C3Vision exploits (1) the ability of the human visual system to get the “gist” of a scene with brief (10’s–100’s of ms) and rapid serial (10 Hz) image presentations and (2) our ability to decode from the EEG whether, based on the gist, the scene is relevant, informative and/or grabs the user’s attention. In this chapter we describe two system architectures for C3Vision that we have developed. The systems are designed to leverage the relative advantages, in both speed and recognition capabilities, of human and computer, with brain signals serving as the medium of communication of the user’s intentions and cognitive state. P. Sajda ( ) · E. Pohlmeyer Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] E. Pohlmeyer e-mail: [email protected] J. Wang · S.-F. Chang Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA J. Wang e-mail: [email protected] S.-F. Chang e-mail: [email protected] B. Hanna Neuromatters, LLC, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] L.C. Parra City College of New York, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] D.S. Tan, A. Nijholt (eds.), Brain-Computer Interfaces, Human-Computer Interaction Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-84996-272-8_9, © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2010 133