A mobile real-time bioengineering front end system.

In the study of physiological system dynamics, a mobile Front End System is needed in faithfully monitoring and recording physiological signals at various experimental sites. Local real-time mode operation is required at the site of the experiment such that the significant dynamic response or event from the subject can be easily captured and displayed as the experiment progresses. An additional requirement is the interfacing with the campus computer network such that numerous network computing resources can be employed in further processing of the captured data. The system is configured by using general-purpose components such as a 50MHz PC-486, a DAS-HRES data acquisition board and some other necessary peripheral devices. An algorithm has been developed for the continuous manipulation of two queues to maintain the real-time task scheduling. Traces can be played back in forward or reverse mode at varied speed after the recording has been made. As desired, any trace segment can be picked up in the play back mode from the huge data files. The system is incorporated in a live subject bioinstrumentation laboratory and has the capability of monitoring signals from four simultaneously experimental setups. The signal types involved are membrane potentials, ECG, EMG, blood pressure, and respiratory flows and gas concentrations.