The measurement, monitoring and use of bioelectric signals has evolved from the measurement of the electrical activity of the heart to encompass tissues ranging from cardiac, skeletal and smooth muscles, to brain and peripheral nerve tissues. Together with this development has been the evolution of specialized equipment to capture and interpret these minute signals. However, the future of bioelectric signals measurement is moving towards the measurement and integration of multiple sources, and multiple locations, which leads to the problem of the need to integrate signals and sources through specialized equipment designed for specific signals. To overcome this problem, Refer2Input (R2i) and its research partners at Indiana University Purdue University (IUPUI) designed novel bioelectric compander system following a reanalysis of the measurement and acquisition problem. The resulting Universal Invertible Amplifier system plays to the strengths of the analog and digital world to span the range of all bioelectric signals coupled with the ability o refocus to specific signals without hardware reconfiguration. In this STTR, R2i and its research partner at IUPUI will further develop this technology and demonstrate feasibility. Phase I Specific Aims are: 1) Develop and implement the hardware platform 2) Develop and implement the software platform and, 3) Complete in- vivo validation of the hardware and software system. The validated and tested UIA system will form the foundational instrumentation basis upon which a multi-modal, multi-frequency applications will be developed in Phase II. This system takes advantage of the universality of the hardware and the real-time refocus abilities of the UIA system, for which a considerable commercial market exists. The system will simplify the instrumentation needs of research and clinical laboratories, reducing costs through convergence to a single common recording platform.
The future of biosignal recordings will see the need for the integration and simultaneous acquisition of distributed, multi-modal, multi-source signals. This project aims to develop and validate a novel universal bioamplifier system in its ability to faithfully capture signals without distortion or loss, and demonstrate its ability to refocus analyis on previously recorded data.
