Generic Dry-Contact Ear-EEG
A. R. Bertelsen1, H. Bladt1, C. B. Christensen1, S. L. Kappel1,2, H. O. Toft3, M. L. Rank3, K. B. Mikkelsen1 and P.
Kidmose1,4

Abstract— Generic dry-contact ear-EEG allows for discreet,
user-friendly, unobtrusive, cost-effective and convenient
recordings of EEG in real-life settings. In this study we introduce
a new generic earpiece design with larger internal ear electrode
distances, resulting in an increased spatial coverage compared
to previous generic earpiece designs. The signal quality of ear-
Fpz, within-ear (the measuring and reference electrode located
in the same ear) and cross-ear (the measuring electrodes located
in one ear and the reference electrode in the opposite ear)
electrode configurations of the developed generic earpiece was
evaluated with auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) and
compared to dry-contact cEEGrid. Ten subjects with different
ear sizes were included. The recordings were performed in a
sleep setup, where the subjects were lying on a bed and the effect
of sleeping position (back vs. sides) was investigated. We found
that the generic earpiece attained statistically significant ASSRs
with ear-Fpz, within-ear and cross-ear electrode configurations.
However, the dry-contact cEEGrid achieved significantly higher
average ASSR signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared to the
generic earpiece. Additionally, this study showed no significant
difference between back and side positions for the ear-EEG.
I. INTRODUCTION
Ear-EEG is one among several methods of wearable EEG
monitoring that has emerged over the past decade[1, 2]. In
contrast to conventional EEG which is traditionally performed
in the laboratory using EEG-caps with wet electrodes, ear-
EEG enables discreet and minimally intrusive long-term
recordings outside the laboratory, using dry-electrodes placed
in the outer ear [3]. Discrete and mobile EEG has many
applications; one important example is sleep monitoring [4],
which requires a robust and comfortable device to ensure
unbiased recordings.
Traditionally, ear-EEG is recorded from electrodes
imbedded in a customized earpiece which is modeled from a
3D scanned ear impression of the subject’s ear and produced
by 3D printing. This production process is cumbersome due to
the many steps needed, resulting in a long manufacturing
process with high production costs. To solve these issues,
several ear canal based generic earpiece designs have been
proposed to achieve a more cost-effective ear-EEG device.
Lee et al. [5] investigated an earphone shaped device with one
carbon nanotube polydimethylsiloxane (CNT/PDMS)-based
electrode in each ear canal. During the evaluation of the
device, they recorded various brain phenomena including the
auditory steady-state response (ASSR) and found a significant
response for 40 Hz modulated pure tone stimuli. Kidmose et
al. [6] developed a silicone-based generic ear-plug-like
earpiece with three conductive silicone electrodes in the ear
canal. They succeeded in recording an ASSR with both
1
Department of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Aarhus University, Finlandsgade 22, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark. 2 Department
of Electronic & Telecommunication Engineering, University of Moratuwa,
978-1-5386-1311-5/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
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recording, reference and ground electrode placed on the same
earpiece. Despite the promising results, the silicone electrodes
required conductive gel for good electrode-skin contact and
were susceptible to degradation, causing increased electrode
impedance. To address these issues, Goverdovsky et al. [7]
developed a memory foam based device with conductive
silver-coated nylon cloth electrodes allowing for more
comfortable and long-term monitoring. Using only a small
amount of saline solution, to obtain good electrode-skin
contact, they recorded ASSR with similar SNR as that of
conventional scalp EEG. The recordings were performed with
an electrode on the earpiece referred to an electrode on the
same-side mastoid, and with the ground electrode on the same-
side ear-lobe. Both Looney et al. [7] and Nquyen et al. [8]
investigated the use of memory foam based earpieces with
electrodes made of conductive fabric for sleep assessment.
These designs included placement of the recording and
reference electrodes in the opposite ear, and a connecting cable
between the earpieces. They succeeded in monitoring different
stages of sleep using a single-channel ear-EEG.
The aim of the current study was to develop a generic
earpiece with dry electrodes for recording of ear-EEG with
recording and reference electrodes placed in the same ear [9].
Due to the short inter-electrode distances, it is a
challenging task to record EEG signals with high SNR within-
ear. Previously, it was demonstrated that increasing the spatial
distance by combining a recording electrode in the ear canal
with a reference electrode in the concha leads to improved
ASSR SNR when using customized earpieces [6, 10, 11].
Based on this finding, it was decided that the generic earpiece
design used in the current study should include electrodes in
both canal and concha.
The study consisted of three steps: a design process
developing generic earpieces, a comfort study evaluating the
comfort of the earpieces during sleep, and finally an
assessment of signal quality based on ASSR recordings. In
order to evaluate the performance of the earpieces, ASSR was
concurrently measured using a dry-contact version of the
cEEGrid electrode grid.
II. METHODS
A. Design process
To achieve unobtrusive EEG recordings, a generic ear-
EEG earpiece must be both comfortable to wear and ensure
reliable electrical contact between the electrodes and the
surface of the body. This must be achieved across the large
anatomical diversity of normal ears, such that the generic
Katubedda, Sri Lanka. 3 UNEEG medical, Lynge, Denmark. 4 Corresponding
author: pki@eng.au.dk.
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 ERA cR3
ERB
cR4
cR4a
ERE
ERK cR4b
cR5
ERT ERC
cR6
(a) (b)
Fig. 1. (a) Photo of a right ear generic earpiece with electrodes – the black
dots are electrodes. (b) 3D model of generic earpiece for the right ear with
electrode labels and positions. (c) 3D model of the cEEGrid inspired device
for the right ear with electrode labels and positions.
earpiece can be used in the majority of subjects. In a design
process, managed using The Double Diamond model, several
generic earpiece designs were developed. The first step of the
design process was a literature review of the anatomy,
morphology and average size of human ears. This review
revealed that even though the human ear has some general
recognizable anatomical features, the ear morphology is as
individual as fingerprints [12]. The size range of the average
human ear was used as a starting point in the design process,
and subsequent design optimization included a hands-on
iterative process assessing the fit of the earpieces inside human
ears. Due to the large size range, the earpieces were developed
in three sizes – small, medium and large.
Initially, three different prototype earpiece designs were
developed. From these, the final generic earpiece design was
selected based on an evaluation of comfort using a semi-
quantitative questionnaire completed by six test subjects after
two nights of sleep with each earpiece.
B. Generic earpiece design
The earpiece design which scored highest in the comfort
study had a concha part with an outward curve following the
cavity of the concha. This part acted like a spring when the
earpiece was inserted into the ear (Fig. 1a-b). This earpiece
design was chosen for the study of the EEG signal quality. The
generic earpiece was made in biocompatible silicone Detax
softwear 2.0 (Detax). Based on earlier observations that
electrodes located in the concha are more prone to loose
contact compared to electrodes located in the ear canal [9], the
electrode-skin contact was optimized by adding bulges at the
electrode positions. Moreover, a recess was added to the edge
of the earpiece at ‘crus of helix’ to ensure good comfort.
Finally, a small plate was added to the concha part to enhance
the insertion procedure of the earpiece. The ear canal part of
the earpiece was connected to the concha part by a flexible
narrow link to accommodate the morphological variation in
the first bend of the ear canal. A cylindrical conduit was added
to the ear canal part to prevent acoustic occlusion of the ear
and allow passage of electrode cables. Six Ø 2.6 mm IrO2 dry-
contact electrodes were positioned at ExA, ExB, ExC and ExT
in concha, and ExE and ExK in the ear canal [2, 9], where x
denotes the left (L) or the right (R) ear (Fig. 1b).
C. Dry-contact cEEGrid
A C-shaped electrode grid with a geometry similar to the
cEEGrid [13], using the same type of dry-contact electrodes as
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cR2
cR1
cR8
cR7
(c) (a) (b) (c)
Fig. 2. Photos of the test setup. (a) The generic earpiece and cEEGrid
mounted on the test subject. (b) A recording performed on the back with
stimuli in left ear. (c) A recording performed on the left side with stimuli in
the right ear.
in the earpieces, was used as a reference device to evaluate the
signal quality of the generic earpiece. The dry-contact
cEEGrid was composed of a silicone rubber sheet containing
ten Ø 3.5 mm IrO2 dry-contact electrodes [9], as shown in Fig.
1c. The cEEGrid was attached around the ear with silicone
adhesive, Adapt Medical Adhesive 7730 (Hollister).
D. Subjects and Experimental setup
Ten subjects (four female and six males), with normal
hearing, participated in the study. The recordings were
performed in a laboratory setting with the subjects lying on a
bed. To evaluate the electrode-skin contact of the earpieces,
two ASSR recordings were performed with the subject lying
on the back; one with sound stimuli being presented to the left
ear, and one with sound stimuli being presented to the right
ear. Thereafter, two ASSR recordings were made with the
subject lying first on their right side and then left side (Fig. 2),
to investigate potential effects of lying on the earpiece. To
comfort subjects lying on their side, only one of the hearing
cups was used from the headphone. During the recordings, the
subjects were carefully instructed to close their eyes and relax.
Sound stimuli were presented to the subjects by one
hearing cup from a DT 770 Pro 32 OHM headphone
(Beyerdynamic GmbH & Co. KG) with an ESI U46 XL
soundcard (ESI Audiotechnik GmbH) at a sampling frequency
of 48 kHz. The ASSR recordings were performed using 6
minutes long broadband CE-chirp stimuli [14] presented at a
repetition rate of 80 Hz at 45 dB relative to individual
sensation levels, which were determined behaviorally prior to
the ASSR recordings. A g.tec trigger box (g.TRIGbox, g.tec
medical engineering GmbH) was used to trigger the EEG data
collection with a trigger frequency of 1 Hz. EEG was recorded
concurrently from the generic earpiece and cEEGrid using a
136 channel Refa EEG amplifier (TMSi) sampling at a rate of
1024 Hz. The amplifier was grounded with a wet conductive
wristband. In addition to the 32 electrodes inserted in the
generic earpieces and the cEEGrids, a single Ø 3.5 mm IrO2
dry-contact electrode was placed at Fpz, thereby enabling re-
referencing to an electrode far away from the ears. A custom
routine written in Matlab (Matlab R2018a, Mathworks) was
used to present the sound stimuli and control the EEG
recording.
E. Data analysis
The EEG data were analyzed after performing the recordings.
First, the data were high-pass filtered with a 4th order
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Table I. Number of ear-Fpz electrode configurations in left (L) and right (R) earpieces with a significant ASSR SNR in recordings made with the subjects
lying on their back along with mean and standard deviation across subjects. The first column for each subject represents the recording, where the subject was
stimulated in the left ear, whereas the second column for represents the recording where the subject was stimulated in the right ear.
Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Mean ± SD
L 5 4 3 4 3 4 3 3 4 4 1 1 3 3 2 3 4 3 3 2
Ear-Fpz config. 3.4 ± 1.1
R 4 6 4 4 2 5 2 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 2 4 3 3 4 5
Table II Number of within-ear (Left and Right earpiece, respectively) and cross-ear electrode configurations with a significant ASSR SNR from recordings
made with the subjects lying on their back along with mean and standard deviation across subjects. The first column for each subject represents the recording,
where the subject was stimulated in the left ear, whereas the second column for represents the recording where the subject was stimulated in the right ear.

Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Mean ± SD
L 4 3 2 5 3 7 6 6 5 3 0 2 1 3 1 6 0 9 2 5
Within-ear 3.6 ± 2.3
R 6 8 3 4 1 8 1 3 0 4 5 5 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 4
Cross-ear 20 32 11 16 6 20 7 16 16 16 4 5 5 9 8 16 12 15 12 11 12.9 ± 6.7

Butterworth filter with a cut-off frequency of 1 Hz to reduce
offset drift, secondly 50 Hz and 100 Hz notch filter were
applied to reduce power line interference. After filtering, a
data set was constructed containing all possible bipolar
electrode derivations and split into epochs of four second’s
duration. Epochs with a maximum absolute value above 100
V were rejected, and datasets with less than 15 remaining
epochs were left out of the analysis. The epochs were time
averaged, and Fourier transformed. Hereafter, the SNR of all
datasets were calculated as the ratio between the amplitude at
the repetition rate of 80 Hz and the average noise amplitude 
10 Hz around the repetition rate. An F-test was applied, to
determine the statistical significance of the ASSR.
III. RESULTS
Table I summarizes the recordings in which the subjects
were lying on their backs, showing the number of good (i.e.
significant ASSR) ear-Fpz electrode configurations in left and
right earpieces for each subject, along with the mean and
standard deviation (SD). All subjects had at least four ear-Fpz
electrode configurations with a significant ASSR, one in each
ear. On average a significant ASSR was recorded from 3.4
electrodes per earpiece.
The number of good within-ear and cross-ear electrode
configurations for each subject is shown in Table II along with
mean and standard deviation across subjects. Every subject
had at least three good within-ear electrode configurations and
four good cross-ear electrode configurations. On average, 3.6
good within-ear electrode configurations were found in each
subject.
Table III summarizes the ASSR SNR found using
electrodes within or around a single ear (within-ear and within-
cEEGrid) or from both ears (cross-ear and cross-cEEGrid).
The SNR was calculated as the average of the three highest
SNR values found for each of the devices. One-sided paired t-
tests were used to test for significant differences in average
ASSR SNR between the generic earpiece and the dry-contact
cEEGrid.
For the earpieces, the average ASSR SNR was found to be
significantly higher for cross-ear electrode configurations
compared to within-ear electrode configurations (p=0.001). In
contrast, no significant difference was found between the
within-cEEGrid and cross-cEEGrid configurations.
When comparing the two devices, the average SNR of the
within-cEEGrid electrode configurations was found to be
significantly higher than the SNR of within-ear electrode
configurations (p<0.001). Similarly, the SNR of the cross-
cEEGrid electrode configurations was found to be
significantly higher than the SNR of the cross-ear
configurations (p<0.001).
In addition to the assessment of the signal quality from the
generic earpieces, it was also tested whether the subject
position had any effect on the number of good electrode
configurations or on the measured ASSR SNR. A one-sided
paired t-test was used to compare the results obtained when the
subjects was lying on the back vs when they were lying on

Table III. Average ASSR SNR in dB of the three highest SNR for within-ear, cross-ear, within-cEEGrid and cross-cEEGrid electrode configurations for each
subject. Along with the mean SNR for within-ear, cross-ear, within-cEEGrid and cross-cEEGrid electrode configurations with standard derivation (SD) across
all subjects. The first row for each electrode configuration represents the back recording, in which the subject was stimulated in the left ear, whereas the second
row represents the back recording in which the subject was stimulated in the right ear. Significant difference between within-ear, cross-ear, within-cEEGrid
and cross-cEEGrid are marked with .

Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Mean ±SD Significant

L 28.6 10.3 19.6 19.0 13.8 21.9 9.7 7.8 12.0 8.8
Within-ear 16.3 ± 6.5
R 13.6 14.3 25.4 28.5 11.1 14.1 18.8 23.8 14.9 10.0
L 28.3 17.3 22.2 17.3 16.8 13.5 14.0 11.0 18.6 16.2
Cross-ear 19.3 ± 5.4
R 14.7 20.3 28.6 28.6 18.1 13.3 23.5 26.3 20.4 16.3
L 29.9 17.8 31.4 34.1 18.6 27.6 19.8 15.8 30.5 14.1
Within-cEEGrid 24.1 ± 7.0
R 17.8 22.0 31.3 29.4 18.8 24.9 32.6 24.0 30.1 10.8
L 29.3 20.3 31.1 33.6 17.4 27.5 21.1 14.4 29.4 19.4
Cross-cEEGrid 24.2 ± 5.9
R 18.1 23.9 26.6 28.5 18.2 23.4 32.2 23.0 29.9 15.9
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their sides. Only the earpieces that were not covered by the
headphone cup was included in the analysis. No significant
effect of subject position on either the number of significant
ear-Fpz electrode configurations per earpiece (p=0.5) or the
maximum ASSR SNR (p=0.08) was found. Subject 8 had no
good ear-Fpz electrode configurations in the recording on the
right side and was therefore not included in the comparison of
the maximum SNR.
IV. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The study showed that the developed generic earpiece
obtained good skin-electrode contact as evaluated through
measurement of ASSR relative to a forehead reference.
Furthermore, the earpieces enabled recording of statistically
significant ASSRs when both recording- and reference
electrodes were placed in the same earpiece. However,
compared to previous results for dry-contact ear-EEG, based
on customized earpieces [9], we found that the developed
generic earpieces had a lower number of good electrodes and
a lower ASSR SNR.
The number and position of electrodes with a good skin
contact were found to vary considerably between subjects.
These findings are in accordance with the fact that there is
large inter-subject variation in ear morphology as well as
earlier observations of inter subject variation in ASSR ear-
topography [10, 11]. This inter-subject variation in electrode
performance underlines the importance of using multiple
electrode positions in generic earpieces, to ensure a sufficient
number of good electrodes in all subjects.
The average ASSR SNR for within-ear electrode
configurations was found to be significantly lower than the
SNR for cross-ear configurations. This was expected, since the
electrode distances of cross-ear configurations were much
larger than the electrode distances of within-ear
configurations. Along the same lines, within-cEEGrid also
outperformed within-ear, likely for the same reason.
Surprisingly, the cross-cEEGrid performance was
significantly higher than the cross-ear performance. This is not
caused by increased electrode distance but may be due to the
considerably larger number of possible cross-cEEGrid
electrode combinations compared to the generic earpiece (100
vs 36). In future studies, a rigorous train-test paradigm to
alleviate this problem should be included.
In conclusion, it was possible to record cortical responses
with the developed generic dry-contact earpiece. While it was
possible to record responses both cross and within ears, we
found that the primary driver in signal quality from generic
earpieces is the inter-electrode distance, similar to what has
been seen before [15]. This underlines the importance of
extending the generic earpiece to also comprise electrodes in
the concha and cymba regions of the ear. This observation
coupled with the fact that deformation of the outer ear (tested
by lying on the side) did not lead to a significant degradation
of electrode contact, leads us to believe that further iterations
on the earpiece design can bring generic earpiece performance
on par with customized devices, and that these earpieces would
be usable for sleep recordings. Subjects generally found the
earpieces to be comfortable to wear, with several subjects even
falling asleep during the recordings.
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