Automated high-speed analysis of gastrointestinal myoelectric activity

Abstract

The value of myoelectric recording in the gastrointestinal tract has been limited by the difficulty of analyzing the prolonged recordings which are required to demonstrate integrated physiological activity. This problem has been solved by the use of a tape recording system with accelerated replay, originally developed for cardiac monitoring. Rapid replay not only reduces the time required for data retrieval but also increases the frequency of the recorded signals to allow electronic separation of fast and slow wave activity for on-line conversion into digital pulses suitable for computer analysis. The technique is illustrated by the analysis of an imperfect prolonged multichannel recording of cannine gastrointestinal myoelectric activity, demonstrating some of the possibilities for data analysis and error detection inherent in the system.

Effects of 13-nle-motilin on the electrical and mechanical activity of the isolated perfused canine stomach and duodenum.

“…The myoelectrical activity from one of the recording sites was used for quantitative analysis. The technique of compressed replay, bandpass filtering, pulse conversion and shaping (Wingate et al, 1975) was used to produce a sequence of pulses corresponding to the spike activity in the duodenal segment as shown in Fig. 2…”

Methods in human alimentary motility.

“…An EEG machine is ideal for this purpose, and the signal can also be stored on magnetic tape for subsequent analysis. The analysis of the record can be made manually, or by computer assisted methods such as digital counting, averaging (Wingate et al, 1977) or Fast Fourier Transformation (Sarna et al, 1980). Evaluation of drugs acting on GIT motility Most of the techniques described above have been used to measure the effects of drugs affecting motor, or secretory functions of the GIT in man.…”

“…An EEG machine is ideal for this purpose, and the signal can also be stored on magnetic tape for subsequent analysis. The analysis of the record can be made manually, or by computer assisted methods such as digital counting, averaging (Wingate et al, 1977) or Fast Fourier Transformation (Sarna et al, 1980).…”

Proceedings of the Physiological Society, 21‐22 February 1986, Royal Free Meeting: Demonstrations

“…An analog system was designed to allow the trigger levels and the filter frequency cut-offs to be adjusted for each animal. The signal from three tape channels was simultaneously filtered to leave only the higher-frequency spike potentials (Wingate, Barnett, Green & Armstrong-James, 1977). The spikes were then converted into TTL pulses of precisely 10 ms duration.…”