The proposed NeuroProbes project aims to design and build multi-electrode arrays and to integrate electrical recording, drug dispensing, and biochemical analysis, while maintaining compatibility with techniques such as fMRI. It also proposes to innovate by providing integrated telemetry. In this project, I work with IMTEK team. My responsibilities in this project are developing a data acquisition software and the supporting electronics hardware for the data acquisition from the needle. The software is used for selecting the desired electrodes, control the brain signal acquitition and process the data by displaying them to the screen or save to the disk. For the hardware, I have developed 8 channels low noise amplifier with filter to amplify the brain signal.

Achievement:
This software became the standar software for the NeuroProbes project. This decission was made on the general group meeting in Paris.

The software is based on C++ under wxWidgets framework and developed using Visual C++ 2005 (for Windows) and XCode (for Mac OS X). I used DialogsBlock for Rapid Application Development (RAD). The software source code follows Doxygen format to simplify the documentation. Beside Doxygen for programming development tool, I use Subversion for controlling the version.

The following figure is the neuroprobes project logo.

Please click the logo to visit NeuroProbes official website

Devices will be specifically designed to suit our biological experiments; multiple arrays will be fabricated with parameters such as probe length, probe pitch and electric contact pitch adjusted for experiments in specific brain areas. By the same token, the additional functions (such as microfluidics, depth control, etc) will also be implemented to conform to individual experimental requirements.

NeuroProbes Group

NeuroProbes project has several participant from universities and companies. The figure above mentiones the members of NeuroProbes project. All members are coming from Europe. The probes that are produced in this projects will be used to acquire the brain signal by penetrating the needle into the brain using needle with electrodes on it. The following figures show while the needle penetrated into the brain.

Needle Is Inserted in Brain

The needle with electrodes is able to acquire the brain signal. This signal can be further processed and analized. The following figure is an example of a needle that is used as a probe.

NeuroProbes Needle

Using the strong tools and integrated development environment allows me to make a stable and powerful software. In this project, a stable and powerful software is necessary due to critical application of this software that working directly with the brain. A small mistake of this software development can be meant different between death or a life.

Based on wxWidgets makes possible compiled this software to several platform like Linux, Windows, MacOS X, PDA, and some more. This C++ code multiplatform capabilities allows our partners to use this software eventhough they use various operating system.