论文标题
带有护理人员的单词通讯系统，可为肌萎缩性侧面硬化症患者提供完全且几乎完全锁定状态
A Word Communication System with Caregiver Assist for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Patients in Completely and Almost Completely Locked-in State
论文作者
论文摘要
具有严重身体损害的人，例如完全锁定状态（CLI）的肌萎缩性侧面硬化症（ALS），无法向他人表达自己的思想。为了解决这个问题，已经开发了许多大脑计算机界面（BCI）系统，但事实证明它们足以适合CLIS。在本文中，我们提出了一个单词通信系统：带有照顾者辅助的BCI，在这种情况下，护理人员在帮助患者表达单词方面发挥了积极作用。我们在这里报告说，几乎有四名ALS患者几乎是CLIS和CLIS中的一名患者，成功地表达了自己的话（日语），以回应无法回答“是/否”的问题。每个受试者都选择基于近红外光线的“是/否”通信辅助工具，其中他或她想以依次表达的单词中包含的元音（最多三个）。然后，护理人员将选定的元音输入带有元音条目的字典，后者返回了带有这些元音的候选单词。当没有适当的词语时，护理人员会更改一个元音，然后从一开始就再次搜索或重新开始。当选择一个合适的单词时，该主题通过“是/否”答案确认。三个受试者对选定的单词表示“是”，至少八分之一（通过统计措施为91.0％的可靠性为91.0％），一个受试者（在CLIS中）（在CLIS中）在八分之一（74.6％）中五次，三分之二的受试者（81.3％）（81.3％）。因此，我们已经朝着此类患者迈出了实用的单词通信系统的第一步。
People with heavy physical impairment such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in a completely locked-in state (CLIS) suffer from inability to express their thoughts to others. To solve this problem, many brain-computer interface (BCI) systems have been developed, but they have not proven sufficient for CLIS. In this paper, we propose a word communication system: a BCI with caregiver assist, in which caregivers play an active role in helping patients express a word. We report here that four ALS patients in almost CLIS and one in CLIS succeeded in expressing their own words (in Japanese) in response to wh-questions that could not be answered "yes/no." Each subject selected vowels (maximum three) contained in the word that he or she wanted to express in a sequential way, by using a "yes/no" communication aid based on near-infrared light. Then, a caregiver entered the selected vowels into a dictionary with vowel entries, which returned candidate words having those vowels. When there were no appropriate words, the caregiver changed one vowel and searched again or started over from the beginning. When an appropriate word was selected, it was confirmed by the subject via "yes/no" answers. Three subjects expressed "yes" for the selected word at least six times out of eight (reliability of 91.0% by a statistical measure), one subject (in CLIS) did so five times out of eight (74.6%), and one subject three times out of four (81.3%). We have thus taken the first step toward a practical word communication system for such patients.
