We arrived to the end of the document. I would not like to end without speaking a little bit about electrodiagnosis. In Spain, Clinical Neurophysiology is a medical speciality dedicated to the recording of activities directly or indirectly produced by the nervous system, and I am a clinical neurophysiologist. This means that, when I am working, I spend most of my time analyzing and reporting electrodiagnostic studies and sleep recordings.
I would like to quote a sentence included by Prof. Liveson in his book Peripheral Neurology:
This book is a labor of love that has evolved out of a 20-year practice of neurologic electrodiagnosis. I hope it is a stimulating teaching source. If the reader finds some of the excitement and challenge that electrodiagnostic neurology has afforded me, I will be satisfied
This is the experience of many people dedicated to the electrodiagnosis, especially if they read his book.
Even more. People who know the theoretical studies of sensory conduction of Prof. Buchtal's school (e.g., Brain Res 1966; 3:1-122), the contributions of Prof. Stalberg's school to very different aspects of electrodiagnosis (e.g., the whole monographic volume: Muscle & Nerve 2002, Suppl 11), the in situ model of the nerve developed by Prof. Stegeman (e.g., Biol. Cybern. 1979; 33:97-111), or the deep insight shown by Prof Wilbourn (e.g., Neurol Clin N Am 2002; 20:305-338) to find new interpretations from a clinical perspective (among many others who made brilliant contributions), know that electrodiagnosis is a field with a deep and consistent theoretical basis, and exchanging recordings should be a common practice.
At the moment of writing this chapter, I do not know any available resource that allows the manipulation of a wide range of electrodiagnostic traces, in the line of PhysioNet . Let us consider some excellent resources widely used in teaching electrodiagnosis today. They allow the vision of the main elements used in electrodiagnosis or even the vision and audition of the electromyographic signal such as it appears in the screen of a modern electromyograph. Generally speaking, however, they do not allow the manipulation of the curves, the reanalysis of the traces or the use of different algorithms to extract new information. The same could be said for the great amount of very accurate mathematical models that could be directly applied to test hypothesis in clinical practice.
I would like very much that EDF+ could contribute a little to the exchange of electrodiagnostic information in the same line than EDF did for sleep recordings and EEGs.