Design of physiological source analysis software for educational purposes

In our project we develop a new educational software tool for electrophysiology courses. It is designed to be suitable for biomedical and technical curricula where these courses are scheduled. The software provides support for the education of electrophysiology. The software focuses on the relations between physiological sources and the observable electrical fields. We draw up a list of five requirements for the software to be successfully applied in education. A descriptive graphical interface, a batch interpreter and a pop-up window for showing additional information are more general demands. Specific to our project is a simulator for computations of the electromagnetic field of a source. Furthermore a database containing a selection of EEG measurements, e.g. of evoked responses is desired. We base our project on an existing advanced source analysis (ASA) software package, which closely meets our requirements. The ASA program which is intended for functional source localization based on EEG, incorporates a graphical interface for the EEG measurement set-up, a batch interpreter and a simulator. For our project we design a user-friendly interface for simulations, add a generator for illustrative message windows and generate a database. The goal of the software extensions is twofold: First, the educational staff is given the opportunity to assemble their own demonstrations. Second, students obtain the chance to exercise with physiological source analysis of EEG. Furthermore, when linked to EEG data acquisition hardware, students are given the exiting opportunity to run a complete EEG experiment in one session, including data acquisition, signal processing and functional source localization