Neural Interfaces to Monitor Fatigue and Sleepiness in the Cathlab

Improvement of patients' care and outcome is largely based on development and validation of drugs and technologies, especially in rapidly evolving fields as Interventional Cardiology. In fact, even though the optimal efficiency of a cathlab can be influenced by Interventional Cardiologist's mental workload, stress' accumulation and performance, little if any attention is paid to the monitoring and optimization of his/her mental status. Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based neural-interfaces are able to estimate workload, fatigue and the degree of sleepiness through spectral analysis techniques. In particular, the amplitude of alpha waves is a widely validated indicator of mental engagement's level. Developing a low cost and highly feasible device to monitor and analyze operator's mental engagement level and performance could be extremely appealing, especially considering both the lack of data in literature for interventional disciplines and the recent technology developments.