User Interface The acquisition interface is system dependent. The acquisition interface for a NeuroCCD-SMQ system is shown in the picture. A variety of options exist for acquisition, including three major acquisition/averaging protocols. NeuroPlex software also controls various aspects of the experiment, such as the shutter, the stimulator, and the camera fans (NeuroCCD).

Additional Information

The data acquisition software is specific to a particular PC based analogue-to-digital converter card. Some capabilities of the acquisition section are:

Signal Averaging:
Three types of averaging are available.
    1. Averaging from a trigger provided by the computer.
    2. Averaging from the occurrence of a spike on one of the recorded channels.
    3. Averaging from the occurrence of an external event such as the EKG.
    (NeuroPDA only)
In this mode, alternate trials with and without a stimulus can be subtracted to reduce heart-beat artifacts.

Subset:
For the Photodiode array system a Subset or Binning of the diodes can be selected for acquisition. Using a subset allows an increase in the frame rate above 1.6 kHz and/or a reduction in the size of the resulting data file. For NeuroCCD 2x2 binning can be used to increase the frame rate, reduce the data storage requirements, and/or reduce the relative dark-noise contribution

Resting Light Intensity:
The DC level of the amplifier output can be measured directly or can be measured after subtracting the DC level with no light.

Other parameters under the user's control are:
    1. file name,
    2. number of points (frames) per detector,
    3. frame interval,
    4. number of trials (for averaging),
    5. interval between trials (for averaging),
    6. and interval between light on and start of sampling.