Electroencephalography (EEG) based authentication

• US 10,482,227 B2
• Filed: 03/28/2017
• Issued: 11/19/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2017
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Chen, Hao, Dang, Ya Bin, Li, Qi Cheng, Li, Shao Chun, Ma, Jie, Mei, Lijun, Wang, Jian, Yu, Yipeng, Zhou, Xin
• Primary Examiner(s): Edwards, Linglan E
• Application Number:
  US15/472,072
• Publication Number:
  US 20180285540A1
• Time in Patent Office: 966 Days
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/117 Identification of persons methods or arrangements for recognising patterns, e.g. fingerprints, G06F18/00, G06V40/00; identification of persons by analysing their voice or speech G10L17/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/378 Visual stimuli
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/32 using biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, iris scans or voiceprints
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/015 Input arrangements based on nervous system activity detection, e.g. brain waves [EEG] detection, electromyograms [EMG] detection, electrodermal response detection
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0861 using biometrical features, e.g. fingerprint, retina-scan cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication using biological data H04L9/3231

Abstract

An authentication method, system, and computer program product for decoding brain activity into a brain pattern sequence, applying brain dialog to interact with a user while the user is entering the brain pattern sequence, and matching the brain pattern sequence with a predetermined password to allow access to a system.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented authentication method, the method comprising:

decoding brain activity into a brain pattern sequence as an entry for a password into a locked device;

applying brain dialogue to interact with a user while the user is entering the brain pattern sequence;

matching the brain pattern sequence with a predetermined password to allow access to a system; and

embedding an alarm module which activates when the user is under a threat as determined by the brain pattern sequence matching a security password as the predetermined password,

wherein a signal is sent to a third-party when the alarm module activates as a result of the threat, and

wherein the decoding deducts the brain pattern sequence by analyzing a signal slope of a slope threshold of the brain activity to determine a timing and a duration of the brain activity.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the brain activity is received via electroencephalography (EEG) of which is processed into a time domain feature, a frequency domain feature, a spatial domain feature, and a signal slope,

wherein the brain activity is classified into user actions associated with the time domain feature, the frequency domain feature, the spatial domain feature, and the signal slope, and

wherein the classified brain activity is matched with the predetermined password based on a threshold error compared to the time domain feature, the frequency domain feature, the spatial domain feature, and the signal slope of the brain activity.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the brain dialogue comprises a sensory signal to the user that is invisible to other users.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the brain pattern sequence comprises an element of a plurality of types of brain activity.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising combining multi-mode brain activities to confirm the brain pattern sequence.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the decoding the brain activity decodes the brain activity using at least one of motion imagery, P300, and Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEP).

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the brain pattern sequence comprises a multi-sequence brain pattern sequence of which a user will obtain authorization directly if a recognition accuracy of a first brain activity is greater than a predetermined threshold to proceed to a next sequence of the multi-sequence brain pattern sequence, and

wherein a time domain feature, a frequency domain feature, a spatial domain feature, and a signal slope of each brain activity are distilled and combined.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein a signal slope is used to determine timing and a duration of brain patterns.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, embodied in a cloud-computing environment.

10. A computer program product for authentication, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer to cause the computer to perform:

decoding brain activity into a brain pattern sequence as an entry for a password into a locked device;

applying brain dialogue to interact with a user while the user is entering the brain pattern sequence;

matching the brain pattern sequence with a predetermined password to allow access to a system; and

embedding an alarm module which activates when the user is under a threat as determined by the brain pattern sequence matching a security password as the predetermined password,

wherein a signal is sent to a third-party when the alarm module activates as a result of the threat, and

wherein the decoding deducts the brain pattern sequence by analyzing a signal slope of a sloe threshold the brain activity to determine a timing and a duration of the brain activity.

11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the brain activity is received via electroencephalography (EEG) of which is processed into a time domain feature, a frequency domain feature, a spatial domain feature, and a signal slope,

wherein the brain activity is classified into user actions associated with the time domain feature, the frequency domain feature, the spatial domain feature, and the signal slope, and

wherein the classified brain activity is matched with the predetermined password based on a threshold error compared to the time domain feature, the frequency domain feature, the spatial domain feature, and the signal slope of the brain activity.

12. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the brain dialogue comprises a sensory signal to the user that is invisible to other users.

13. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the brain pattern sequence comprises an element of a plurality of types of brain activity.

14. The computer program product of claim 10, further comprising combining multi-mode brain activities to confirm the brain pattern sequence.

15. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the decoding the brain activity decodes the brain activity using at least one of motion imagery, P300, and Steady-State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEP).

16. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the brain pattern sequence comprises a multi-sequence brain pattern sequence of which a user will obtain authorization directly if a recognition accuracy of a first brain activity is greater than a predetermined threshold to proceed to a next sequence of the multi-sequence brain pattern sequence, and

wherein a time domain feature, a frequency domain feature, a spatial domain feature, and a signal slope of each brain activity are distilled and combined.

17. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein a signal slope is used to determine timing and a duration of brain patterns.

18. An authentication system, said system comprising:

a processor; and

a memory, the memory storing instructions to cause the processor to perform;

decoding brain activity into a brain pattern sequence as an entry for a password into a locked device;

applying brain dialogue to interact with a user while the user is entering the brain pattern sequence;

matching the brain pattern sequence with a predetermined password to allow access to a system; and

embedding an alarm module which activates when the user is a under threat as determined by the brain pattern sequence matching a security password as the predetermined password,

wherein a signal is sent to a third-party when the alarm module activates as a result of the threat, and

wherein the decoding deducts the brain pattern sequence by analyzing a signal slope of a slope threshold of the brain activity to determine a timing and a duration of the brain activity.