Individual identification based on code-modulated visual-evoked potentials

The electroencephalography (EEG) method has recently attracted increasing attention in the study of brain activity-based biometric systems because of its simplicity, portability, noninvasiveness, and relatively low cost. However, due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of EEG, most of the existing EEG-based biometric systems require a long duration of signals to achieve high accuracy in individual identification. Besides, the feasibility and stability of these systems have not yet been conclusively reported, since most studies did not perform longitudinal evaluation. In this paper, we proposed a novel EEG-based individual identification method using code-modulated visual-evoked potentials (c-VEPs). Specifically, this paper quantitatively compared eight code-modulated stimulation patterns, including six 63-bit (1.05 s at 60-Hz refresh rate) m-sequences (M1-M6) and two spatially combined sequence groups (M × 4 : M1-M4 and M × 6 : M1-M6) in recording the c-VEPs from a group of 25 subjects for individual identification. To further evaluate the influence of inter-session variability, we recorded two data sessions for each individual on different days to measure intra-session and cross-session identification performance. State-of-the-art VEP detection algorithms in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) were employed to construct a template-matching-based identification framework. For intra-session identification, we achieved a 100% correct recognition rate (CRR) using 5.25-s EEG data (average of five trials for M5). For cross-session identification, 99.43% CRR was attained using 10.5-s EEG signals (average of ten trials for M5). These results suggest that the proposed c-VEP-based individual identification method is promising for real-world applications.