Software for biomedical engineering signal processing laboratory experiments

In the early 1990's we developed a special computer program called UW DigiScope to provide a mechanism for anyone interested in biomedical digital signal processing to study the field without requiring any other instrument except a personal computer. There are many digital filtering and pattern recognition algorithms used in processing biomedical signals. In general, students have very limited opportunity to have hands-on access to the mechanisms of digital signal processing. In a typical course, the filters are designed non-interactively, which does not provide the student with significant understanding of the design constraints of such filters nor their actual performance characteristics. UW DigiScope 3.0 is the first major update since version 2.0 was released in 1994. This paper provides details on how the new version based on MATLAB! works with signals, including the filter design tool that is the programming interface between UW DigiScope and processing algorithms.