Evaluation of dry textile EEG electrodes using a gelatin-based skin phantom

Abstract

Dry textile electrodes are a promising alternative to conventional wet Ag–AgCl electrodes for long-term wearable electroencephalography (EEG), but their electrical performance has yet to be rigorously validated. This study uses a gelatin-based skin phantom with a physiologically plausible, frequency-dependent impedance profile to benchmark textile EEG electrodes against gold-standard Ag–AgCl electrodes. Specifically, the impedance of textile electrodes with varying fabrication parameters was evaluated. Electrodes with increased height, higher stitch density, and larger surface area exhibited lower impedance and better electrode-phantom coupling. When situated on the phantom surface, the signal quality of textile electrodes was comparable to that of Ag–AgCl electrodes for simulated input sinusoids, P300 and steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) signals. For the P300 task, a low root mean-squared error between textile and Ag–AgCl recordings indicates a high degree of agreement between the recorded signals. For the SSVEP task, textile electrodes preserved distinct spectral peaks at target frequencies, with relative SNR values remaining near unity. These results demonstrate that dry textile electrodes can reliably capture EEG temporal and spectral features relevant to brain-computer interface applications. Future work to optimize textile electrode design and assess performance under realistic recording conditions is warranted.