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The PiNe box: Development and validation of an electronic device to time-lock multimodal responses to sensory stimuli
Alan Worley1, Kirubin Pillay2, Maria M Cobo2
1Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, London, United Kingdom.
Insights
We developed a new system to precisely synchronize infant sensory stimuli with vital signs and electrophysiological recordings. This innovation aids in understanding infant development and objective pain assessment.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Biology
- Biomedical Engineering
Background:
- Multimodal recordings in infants are crucial for understanding nervous system development.
- Accurate time-locking across data streams is essential for correct interpretation of infant responses.
- Objective multimodal pain assessment in infants could improve clinical care.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and assess a system for time-locking sensory stimuli to infant electrophysiological and vital signs monitor recordings.
- To enable precise synchronization of data from various hospital equipment, including legacy systems.
- To facilitate objective analysis of infant responses to stimuli.
Main Methods:
- Developed the 'PiNe box' electronic device to integrate stimulus presentation with data recording.
- Synchronized stimuli (visual, auditory, tactile, heel lance) with electrophysiological recordings.
- Achieved time-locking to hospital vital signs monitors with an average precision of 105 ms (SD: 19 ms).
Main Results:
- The PiNe box system achieved precise time-locking (average 105 ms SD 19 ms) between stimuli and vital signs.
- The method reliably synchronizes data from legacy (TTL, RS-232) and networkable devices.
- Demonstrated utility with visual and noxious stimuli in infants.
Conclusions:
- The developed system offers a flexible, inexpensive, and effective solution for multimodal data synchronization in infants.
- This approach supports accurate interpretation of infant responses and objective pain assessment.
- The system's compatibility with existing hospital equipment makes it broadly applicable across age groups.
Abstract:
Recording multimodal responses to sensory stimuli in infants provides an integrative approach to investigate the developing nervous system. Accurate time-locking across modalities is essential to ensure that responses are interpreted correctly, and could also improve clinical care, for example, by facilitating automatic and objective multimodal pain assessment. Here we develop and assess a system to time-lock stimuli (including clinically-required heel lances and experimental visual, auditory and tactile stimuli) to electrophysiological research recordings and data recorded directly from a hospitalised infant's vital signs monitor. The electronic device presented here (that we have called 'the PiNe box') integrates a previously developed system to time-lock stimuli to electrophysiological recordings and can simultaneously time-lock the stimuli to recordings from hospital vital signs monitors with an average precision of 105 ms (standard deviation: 19 ms), which is sufficient for the analysis of changes in vital signs. Our method permits reliable and precise synchronisation of data recordings from equipment with legacy ports such as TTL (transistor-transistor logic) and RS-232, and patient-connected networkable devices, is easy to implement, flexible and inexpensive. Unlike current all-in-one systems, it enables existing hospital equipment to be easily used and could be used for patients of any age. We demonstrate the utility of the system in infants using visual and noxious (clinically-required heel lance) stimuli as representative examples.
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