MEPHunter, a free software for signal visualization and analysis

Dec 20, 2014

NeuroMat, FAPESP's Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics, has become a reference for open-science tools, particularly free software, and has attracted potential partners. On November, 26, 2014, a researcher from the University of São Paulo's Laboratory of Biomagnetism (Biomag Lab), at Ribeirão Preto, Victor Hugo de Oliveira e Souza, presented to the NeuroMat technology-transfer team an open-access, free software to help signal visualization and analysis, the Motor Evoked Potentials Hunter (MEPHunter). According to Souza, the assessment of electrophysiological data is currently a time-consuming step in experimental procedures, and the MEPHunter is a means of making this step more efficient. “Most researchers spend many hours learning computer programming to write scripts to analyze their own data. This is related to many available softwares being difficult to use, with no graphical user interface or limited number of functionalities,” he explained. The Biomag Lab team started to develop MEPHunter in 2011. This software has been designed to work specifically with experiments that use surface electromyography (sEMG) data recorded in transcranial magnetic stimulations (TMS).

See Souza's presentation at NeuroMat below:

System details

A free software, MEPHunter is written in MATLAB v7.8 (MathWorks, Natick, USA) and has full compatibility with updated versions, according to Souza. It was developed following the oriented-object programming rules, so that many users may develop it continuously. Adding new functions and interfaces can be done as creating plugins.

According to Biomag Lab, MEPHunter provides a set of functions to split continuous time course data into windows to be presented in graphs. It also has functions for bandpass filtering, threshold applications, amplitude calculations and maps creation. Users can interact directly with the automated markings created by the software, and change according their needs.

The software is able to read data exported by four different models of sEMG amplifiers and to export the processing results in a text or Excel file for statistical analysis.

Key facts

MEPHunter may be downloaded at: github.com/biomaglab/mephunter

For further information: biomaglab.wordpress.com

This piece is part of NeuroMat's Newsletter #11. Read more here

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