Dry electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes enable rapid, gel-free setups, which are crucial for point-of-care diagnostics, but often face challenges with comfort and signal quality—especially in a clinical context. Novel “flower” dry electrodes are a special type of reusable scalp electrodes for dry EEG, featuring a distinct flower-like shape with angled pins in three intertwined layers. While the new electrode design has been validated in an in vivo study on healthy volunteers, we tested its clinical applicability in a proof-of-concept study involving three patients diagnosed with epilepsy and delirium. The recordings were of high diagnostic quality, enabling the reliable identification of pathological patterns, such as generalized spike–wave complexes and intermittent delta activity, with a signal-to-noise ratio comparable to prior reports for sponge-based EEG systems (limited case series). The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) proved to be sufficiently high for clinical diagnostic purposes, resulting in visually clear and interpretable EEG data that enabled effective assessment of patients’ neurophysiological signals. Consequently, our findings demonstrate that the comfortable flower-electrode design is a viable and effective tool for epilepsy diagnostics, extended recording, and clinical neurophysiology. It represents a significant step towards patient-centered and gel-free EEG technology, specifically in point-of-care and emergency applications, without compromising the diagnostic quality of the recordings.
Dimitrakopoulos et al. (Tue,) studied this question.