With the development of brain-computer interface industry, large amounts of related applications have entered people’s vision. BCI applications based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) are widely used because they do not require pre-training and have high information transmission rates. However, in the actual use of SSVEP stimulus paradigm, the subjects will produce visual fatigue with the use, and fatigue will affect the transmission efficiency. In this experiment, an experimental environment consisting of two paradigm stimulus frequencies (7.5 Hz, 15 Hz), three resolutions (800 × 600, 1280 × 720, 1920 × 1080) and three refresh rates (120 Hz, 240 Hz, 360 Hz) is set up. The Likert scale is used to collect subjective fatigue and preference scores, and the EEG acquisition system and eye tracker are used to collect objective data. Using the proposed information entropy-CRITIC algorithm to combine subjective and objective indicators, a fatigue assessment system (display screen fitness-DSF) is innovated to score different experimental environments. The higher the DSF score, the better the visual experience. The results show that when using the 7.5 Hz SSVEP paradigm, the combination of 360 Hz and 1920 × 1080 can bring the best visual experience. When using the 15 Hz SSVEP paradigm, the combination of 240 Hz and 1280 × 720 is the best. DSF provides powerful help for hardware and software selection guidance and vision protection when using SSVEP-based BCI applications.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-024-79401-3.