Development of MATLAB software to control data acquisition from a multichannel systems multi-electrode array

A Multichannel Systems (MCS) microelectrode array data acquisition (DAQ) unit is used to collect multichannel electrograms (EGM) from a Langendorff perfused rabbit heart system to study sudden cardiac death (SCD). MCS provides software through which data being processed by the DAQ unit can be displayed and saved, but this software's combined utility with MATLAB is not very effective. MCSs software stores recorded EGM data in a MathCad (MCD) format, which is then converted to a text file format. These text files are very large, and it is therefore very time consuming to import the EGM data into MATLAB for real-time analysis. Therefore, customized MATLAB software was developed to control the acquisition of data from the MCS DAQ unit, and provide specific laboratory accommodations for this study of SCD. The developed DAQ unit control software will be able to accurately: provide real time display of EGM signals; record and save EGM signals in MATLAB in a desired format; and produce real time analysis of the EGM signals; all through an intuitive GUI.