Investigating individual neurons has proven very useful in understanding their functionality. However, all biological systems are composed of a multitude of neurons that interact-with a variety of sensory and skeletal muscular systems. Researchers are anxious to have the ability to record a large number of neuron firing patterns to study how they communicate and interact in a biological system. Tools such as the multi-channel electrode have been created to study the interactions of large numbers of neurons. However, in order to record all the channels, the researcher must gang several recorders together. This leads to difficulties in accurately matching all the channels during playback, because of the complexity of ganged multiple recorders. R.C - Electronics Inc. proposes to build a low cost, high speed digital recorder utilizing PC technology. This digital recorder will be able to record continuously to a mass storage device at an aggregate rate of 1 MHz. It will also provide the researcher with the ability to acquire up to 96 channels, with each channel sampled at 10 KHz; higher speeds will be possible with fewer channels.
There is a market demand for the digital recorder in the multitude of life science applications engaged in complex biological system studies. We also believe that this will be a good industrial recorder, capable of replacing the existing analog and DAT recorders for acoustic, noise. and vibration studies. There will also be a market to replace some of the high-end work stations based on HP, Concurrent and Sun data acquisition systems.
