Share thisIn recent years, preclinical research has evolved considerably to exploit the benefits of wireless communications. The most obvious manifestation has been the advent of telemetry systems (invasive and non-invasive) providing higher quality data generated by less stressed subjects. Software has also had to adapt to efficiently and reliably handle increasing amounts of data associated with continuous recordings. The upward trend is set to continue as installations become larger1 and video becomes commonplace. In this context, choosing acquisition and analysis software really able to enhance your research productivity is not an easy task, especially when one of your key objectives should also be to have an open system, avoiding being tied to a single vendor.
WIRELESS MEANS TELEMETRY
Wireless technology has made possible the ability to reliably transfer high volumes of data from a freely moving animal. Advantages associated with these techniques are obvious and well known — longer and better quality data obtained from less stressed subjects.
During the last six years, the advent of non-invasive telemetry has taken us a step further, making long and high quality data available from animals that have not undergone surgery.
Telemetry provides continuous data for hours and days. This is wonderful from the scientific point of view since the quality of information that can be derived from such long recordings is greatly enhanced as compared with, for example, one-minute ECG recording snapshots which until only recently were the rule in toxicology.
Telemetry hardware is so different from previous technologies that it has a powerful impact on the software (that users should choose and use). Thus, telemetry systems need to be integrated into your IT structure(s) to be operated with a powerful software package; a software platform that deals with the issues created by telemetry systems.