AN INTEGRATED, INTERACTIVE, USER-ORIENTED BIOMEDICAL DATA ACQUISITION, PROCESSING, AND DISPLAY SYSTEM

Researchers experimenting in the biological and medical sciences monitor changes in the states of physiological systems in controlled environments before, during, and after physical or chemical interventions. The derived series of measurements define particular functions when plotted against time. In most cases, the functions belong to recognizable classes of waveforms, and results depend on the accurate description of changes in waveform locations, durations, heights, shapes, orientations, and periodicity. The sophistication of the experiments, accuracy of the measurements, and complexity of the analyses have been restricted by paper recording and manual treatment of the waveforms. Although computers have become widespread in the biomedical laboratory, their applications are specific and their utilization requires programming.;The system combines and extends existing signal acquisition, interactive computation, and dataset manipulation approaches with features developed specifically for biomedical data processing applications. Innovations include: user-oriented input/output protocols; propagation of narrative and numerical information across system modules; interactive marking of significant physiological event times; construction and management of archival and resident experiment datasets; accessibility of differentiated and filtered signals; a subroutine library for custom analysis programming; and interfaces for user-defined virtual and external data. In addition, the system incorporates three new biomedical signal processing algorithms that identify extrema, locate specified values, and remove 50/60 Hz interference.;All phases of biomedical data processing are integrated into a consistent and unified set of program modules invoked in a prescribed sequence. With these modules, the biomedical researcher obtains more accurate experiment results, due to the higher precision and volume of data, in a straight-forward, automated, and highly efficient fashion. Furthermore, displaying and analyzing long recordings of simultaneous biomedical signals enables the investigation of complex transient responses from more physiologically intact preparations using advanced statistical techniques. The cardiovascular system illustrates the theory, design, and application of this biomedical data processing system.;This dissertation details a new integrated biomedical data acquisition, processing, and display software system for researchers with limited computing skills. A researcher may operate the system without knowing computer languages, file system formats, or peripheral device interfaces. Software methodology underlying the system employs certain input, output, and storage devices, but is independent of any particular operating system or hardware implementation.