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University of Trento Secondment exploring Smart Textiles to record EEG signals

Posted: 13-09-2024

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    Komal Khuwaja, a PhD student in Walton Institute’s Mobile Ecosystem and Pervasive Sensing Division, recently completed a two-month secondment in Italy with the University of Trento as part of the DUCA project.

    DUCA

    Coordinated by Walton Institute at South East Technological University (SETU), the DUCA project – Data Usage Control for Empowering Digital Sovereignty for All Citizens – aims to promote innovative international, inter-sectoral, and interdisciplinary collaboration in research and innovation through exchanging staff and sharing knowledge and ideas. The focus of the project is data sovereignty: transparency and control over the protection, residence, and use of user data. It gives individuals, states, or the EU control over the encryption, privacy, access to data, and how and why this data is processed and used (including monetized) by actors in a value chain.

    Smart textile prototype versus standard EEG cap

    During her time in Italy, Komal focused on testing a new smart textile-based prototype for recording EEG signals. The project involved trials with healthy human participants to validate the performance of this new smart textile prototype compared to a standard commercial EEG cap. She also engaged in important discussions on how to address privacy and security issues in future work, ensuring the highest standards for data protection.

    Advancing privacy protection

    According to Jim Clarke, DUCA project coordinator Komal’s work is extremely valuable as this use case will provide significant new information to the larger DUCA framework regarding usage management for AI and Big Data in health monitoring: “Komal’s secondment will advance privacy protection and data protection capabilities for health parameter monitoring utilizing SETU’s developed smart wearable garment that contains embedded EEG sensors. The main objective is to perform in-depth investigations of physiological signals in conjunction with the neurological expertise of the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento. In particular, pre-processing and analysis of EEG data from our wearable, which is incorporated into flexible clothing, are the main focus. The joint endeavour seeks to investigate health parameters monitoring applications, such as epilepsy, brain/body monitoring, rehabilitation, and stress analysis with significant added novelty to the distributed framework of DUCA.”

    Komal and Marco Buiatti, Laboratory Manager Baby Lab & Neonatal Neuroimaging Unit Centre of Mind/Brain Sciences

    Speaking of her experience Komal said, “I would like to say a special thank you to Marco Buiatti, Laboratory Manager Baby Lab & Neonatal Neuroimaging Unit Centre of Mind/Brain Sciences, and the University of Trento, for hosting me and providing a productive and welcoming environment. I am deeply grateful to my supervisory team Dr Louise Bennett, Dr Frances Cleary, Prof John Wells and Ram Prasadh Narayanan, and project coordinator Jim Clarke, for their support and efforts to make this opportunity possible. I look forward to applying what I’ve learned and continuing to contribute to advancements in smart textiles and EEG technology.”