Study on the spatial resolution of EEG - effect of electrode density and measurement noise

The spatial resolution of electroencephalography (EEG) is studied by means of inverse cortical EEG solution. Special attention is paid to the effect of electrode density and the effect of measurement noise on the spatial resolution. A three-layer spherical head model is used as a volume conductor to obtain the source-field relationship of cortical potentials and scalp potential field. Effect of measurement noise is evaluated with truncated singular value decomposition (TSVD). Also simulations about different electrode systems´ ability to separate cortical sources are performed. The results show that as the measurement noise increases the advantage of dense electrode systems decreases. Our results suggest that in clinical measurement environment it is always beneficial to use at least 64 measurement electrodes. In low-noise realistic measurement environment the use of even 256 measurement electrodes is beneficial.