A computer assisted data acquisition and management system for electropbysiological experiments based on a graphical user interface

A computer system for the acquisition and the visualization of multichannel data used in electrophysiological experiments of the heart is presented in this paper. Extracellular action potentials were measured by a multielectrode array and stored in a transient recorder. Topological data of the recording sites related to the heart preparation were gained by a CCD-videocamera. Video data, multichannel biosignal data and text (comments typed in during the experiment) were integrated in an especially designed file system. The major goal of this system design is the rapid visualization of the acquired biosignal and video data and the automatic generation of an experimental protocol. To meet the demand of future extensions this system was built within a multitasking environment with a Graphical User Interface (GUI).