Brain-computer interface (BCI) system builds a communication bridge between the brain and the external world by transforming neural signals into control commands without body movement (Birbaumer et al., 1999; Pfurtscheller et al., 2000; Guger et al., 2003; Blankertz et al., 2004; Birbaumer, 2006; Wolpaw, 2014). For severely disabled patients, BCI can help them to manipulate external devices for communication (Sellers and Donchin, 2006; Nijboer et al., 2008; Mainsah et al., 2015).

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is commonly used for BCI. This technology is developed based on neurophysiological patterns such as event related potentials (ERPs) (Blankertz et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2012; Jin et al., 2014; Yeom et al., 2014), slow cortical potentials (Mensh et al., 2004; Kübler and Birbaumer, 2008), event-related desynchronization/synchronization (Pfurtscheller and Neuper, 2006; Pfurtscheller et al., 2010; Lisi et al., 2014; Sandhya et al., 2014) and steady-state evoked potentials (SSVEPs) (Müller-Putz and Pfurtscheller, 2008; Wang et al., 2008; Allison et al., 2010). BCI speller is one of the common BCI-based applications that paralyzed patients use to express their thoughts (Allison and Pineda, 2003; Krusienski et al., 2008). In 1988, Farwell et al. proposed the P300-based BCI speller (Farwell and Donchin, 1988). P300 signal is detected using Oddball paradigm (Polich and Kok, 1995). The classical interface was composed of a 6 × 6 letter matrix including 26 characters, 9 numbers, and a SPACE symbol. Users can spell characters using P300-based target selection. In recent years, P300 spellers have been studied for improving signal processing (Kindermans et al., 2012; Throckmorton et al., 2013; Mainsah et al., 2014a; Speier et al., 2014, 2015) and paradigm designing (Combaz et al., 2012; Jin et al., 2012; Mainsah et al., 2014b; Shih et al., 2014; Li et al., 2015). Letter matrices were used to display optional targets, and different flash patterns were developed for improving P300-based classification accuracy and speed.

Cecotti proposed a SSVEP-based speller with five stimulus buttons including character groups (Cecotti, 2010). To spell a letter, user should focus on the corresponding stimuli. Volosyak et al. developed a SSVEP speller controlled using a virtual keyboard (Volosyak et al., 2011). Five commands were used to move the cursor and select the character in a virtual keyboard. Speed of the SSVEP-based speller is reduced due to the limitation of control commands. To solve this problem, 30 flicking stimulus with different frequencies were designated to the speller (Hwang et al., 2012). The average speed was 9.39 letter per minute (LPM), and the average rate of data transfer was 40.72 bits per minute. One disadvantage for these spellers is visual fatigue caused by prolonged gazing.

The Berlin BCI research group has proposed a novel speller paradigm called “Hex-o-Spell,” with which subjects spell a character using two-step commands in a hexagon interface (Blankertz et al., 2006). For most subjects, the speed of their performance in this two-class MI-based BCI speller was between 4.6 and 7.6 LPM. However, the performances of existing MI-based spellers are not comparable with visual stimuli-based speller (Blankertz et al., 2006; D'albis et al., 2012). Recently, the efficiency of MI-based BCI speller has been greatly improved by the Oct-o-spell paradigm in our previous work (Chen et al., 2013). We developed a 2-D cursor control strategy using the modified Hex-o-Spell paradigm and an asynchronous control switch was used for starting the system.

In this paper, synchronous protocol is presented for BCI speller. Furthermore, an intelligent input method is used for improving the performance of the BCI speller. The online experiment is conducted involving three subjects. The comparable result is showed to validate the feasibility of this BCI speller.

In our study, online English and Chinese words spelling experiments were respectively conducted to evaluate our synchronous BCI system. Conventionally, some typical indicators were selected to assess the systematical efficiency. (1) Accuracy rate (ACC): the percentage of successful classification result. (2) Information transmission ratio (ITR): the bit rate of information communicated per unit time. (3) Letter per minute (LPM).

Table 2 shows the performance for 3 subjects. The comparison between PTE and non-PTE methods didn't show significant differences.

For the English word spelling experiment, we compared synchronous control with previous asynchronous control under the same experimental condition (Figure 5). There were no significant differences between these two control methods in ACC (paired t-test: t = 0.4125, p > 0.05), ITR (paired t-test: t = 2.3053, p > 0.05) or LPM (paired t-test: t = 0.2428, p > 0.05). Even so, the synchronous mode had better performance in ITR and LPM. It was verified that this strategy had higher efficiency in BCI output than that of asynchronous mode.

Chinese spelling tasks were performed by all subjects. The performance is presented in Table 3. All subjects achieved sufficient performance rate of over 70% (criterion level). It demonstrated that our proposed BCI speller was feasible for both English and Chinese.

For 3 subjects, experimental results showed that motor imagery was feasible for common communication and expression in BCI. All subjects gave positive feedback to the manipulation of the speller after experiments. No pronounced difference was observed between our MI-based speller and other BCI spellers (e.g., SSVEP, P300) (Cecotti, 2010; Jin et al., 2011a,b; Xu et al., 2014). Moreover, the accuracy and ITR of our MI-based speller are approximately equal to those of hybrid BCIs (Xu et al., 2013; Yin et al., 2013). This MI-based control strategy is useful for Oct-o-Spell paradigm. The result of LPM implied that our MI-control strategy had better output performance than those of previous BCI spellers (Blankertz et al., 2006; D'albis et al., 2012). Moreover, the number of candidate characters was 36 for our BCI system. And previous MI-based BCI spellers had few target characters for user selection. It indicated that our BCI speller was more practical than other MI-based BCI spellers.

In the experiment, subjects performed two motor imagery tasks simultaneously. Compared with traditional single modality-based MI control task, it was more difficult to obtain accurate results in this parallel control system because of simultaneous multi modality -based MIs. We reported the number of errors for all motor imagery tasks (Figure 6). The error was defined as the incorrect block selection resulted from cursor moving, which indicated by the use of “Back” and “Delt.” It was speculated that, before these two characters were used for correcting a mistake, the user didn't move the cursor along with the target direction, caused by poor performance in MI tasks. It indicated that synchronous motor imagery tasks (i.e., left hand and feet motor imagery, right hand and feet motor imagery, and left hand and right hand motor imagery) were harder to be mentally controlled. Hand-based motor imagery with two hands was the most difficult task for moving the cursor to the target point. Therefore, characters used frequently must be located in the position where the subject is able to move the cursor by single modality-based MI.

Although the precision and ITR of Non-PTE mode was slightly higher than PTE mode, no significant differences were observed in terms of performance between the PTE and the Non-PTE mode. The detailed process of character input for all subjects was reported at Tables 4–6. Although there were more spelling errors in the PTE mode, which was probably due to distraction caused by word selection, the number of required characters by the PTE mode was less than that for the Non-PTE mode. Nevertheless, this disadvantage was compensated by the reduction of required spelling letters. It was reflected in the average number of spelling letters per word. That was the reason why the LPM of the PTE mode was higher than that for the Non-PTE mode. Moreover, the efficiency of PTE mode could be improved by raising the precision of character selection.

The ITRs for the synchronous mode were higher than those for the asynchronous mode for all the subjects. The asynchronous BCI took some time to start the speller, which reduced the transmission efficiency in a trial. Therefore, the number of switch control was decreased for improving the efficiency of the BCI speller. Therefore, subjects needed to reduce the use of switch control for improving the efficiency of the BCI speller. For instance, when the user activated the switch consciously in the first layer, the switch would be active automatically for target selection in the second and third layer. Because the user intended to spell something after activating the speller in the first layer. The switch was redundant to detect mental state when the user was conscious to manipulating. Thus, the time consumption would be reduced for better ITR and LPM. Meanwhile, we could add a selective function for switching off the system in the second and third layers. It was used for correcting the false positive selection in the first layer. This control protocol that possess the superiority of both patterns, would be developed in further work.

The number of electrodes of our BCI speller was higher than SSVEP-based BCI speller (Xu et al., 2014). As mentioned, fewer channels were beneficial for wearable portable BCI devices. And the selection of electrodes would be considered for real conditions and user experience in future. Furthermore, optional mode-based BCI speller should be developed to account for individual differences.

This paper proposed a novel MI-based BCI speller with Oct-o-spell paradigm for word input. The 3D motor imagery was used for synchronous control. The detailed analysis was given in the discussion. Our results showed that MI-based synchronous protocol was feasible for BCI speller. And the efficiency of the PTE mode was superior to that of the non-PTE mode.

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of “name of guidelines, name of committee” with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the “name of committee.”

LC and BX contributed to the conception of the study, as well as performed the data analyses and wrote the manuscript. OM, JL, and HX contributed significantly to analysis and manuscript preparation. And NB helped revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content.