Multichannel real-time analysis of the clinical EEG on a dual microprocessor system

A dual microprocessor system has been developed as an aid to conventional visual analysis of the EEG. Up to eight channels of EEG gathered from any standard EEG strip-chart machine can be processed in real time. The analysis is performed on a dual microprocessor "pipe-line" configuration that is built using Motorola 68000 (16-bit) and 6809 (8-bit) microprocessors. The system is basically software oriented in order to offer processing flexibility. The 16-bit processor is dedicated to the critical task of signal analysis based on a newly developed period-peak algorithm. The 8-bit processor is dedicated to the pre- and post-processing tasks, including statistical generations and display control. Analysis results for each channel are displayed on a video terminal in several convenient graphical formats.