Clinical Neurophysiology is a medical field whose object is the study of the electrical activity generated (directly or indirectly) by the nervous system. In practice, clinical neurophysiologists are in charge of electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), evoked potentials, sleep recordings and other analogous diagnostic tests. These pages are dedicated to these persons.
Clinical Neurophysiology has deeply changed with the introduction of computers. Polygraphs, electromyographs and other analogous instruments are now mounted on computers. At the core of these systems, files containing sampled data are stored, copied or processed.
Paradoxically, although files containing signals can be easily manipulated, the possibility to do that is strongly limited in practice. Modifications such as changing the algorithm applied to measure the amplitude of a response (base to peak or peak to peak, for instance) can be troublesome or even impossible. This situation is even worse when the user tries to develop some kind of analysis not previously implemented by the equipment.
Often the system does not contain information about the internal structure of data and, almost invariably, the user will have no access to the tools of development. If we compare the ability of a clinical neurophysiologist to treat a text, a sound or an image with his or her ability to manipulate neurophysiological signals, it is evident that there exists a wide gap.
Using software independent of the acquisition equipment would probably narrow this gap. These pages deal with some issues of signal treatment applied to Clinical Neurophysiology and intend to establish some bridges between :