Demonstration of periodic and aperiodic EEG reliability between laboratory and clinic settings

Structured Abstract Objective To facilitate the scalability of EEG research, this paper compares the data quality and evaluates the absolute agreement of EEG features between laboratory and clinic settings. Methods Resting state EEG recordings were obtained from 36 participants (11 infants, 10 children, and 15 adults) from the waiting room of a primary care clinic and a laboratory. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC(2,1)) quantified the absolute agreement between laboratory and clinic settings for periodic power bands, alpha peak characteristics, and aperiodic components. The mean absolute difference (MAD) between laboratory and clinic recorded EEGs were calculated to describe signal consistency across settings. Results More components were rejected from clinic-recorded EEGs, though data quality otherwise did not differ between settings. The ICC (2,1) for all EEG measures were generally in the good-to-excellent range across ages and regions of interest. The MAD decreased with age and was largest in the alpha frequency range. Conclusions High quality EEG data can be collected from outpatient clinic settings among infants, children, and adults. There is high reliability in the parameterized periodic and aperiodic EEG features between laboratory and clinic settings. Significance Future research may collect EEG datasets from naturalistic settings with confidence in their reliability relative to laboratory recordings.