🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4272@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk> ph@physiology.oxford.ac.uk (Patrick
Haggard) writes:

>I am looking for a high-level language/environment for viewing,
>editing, and manipulating physiological signals.  My signals tend to

As far as commercial choices go, there is MATLAB, IDL or PV-wave.  (IDL and
PV-wave were the same program, but are know diverging).  We use all three
here, and are quite happy with them.  If you decide on MATLAB, the new
version 4.0 is / will be an improved product, with better graphing.  I saw a
demo at a conference recently, and it looks quite impressive.  This is my
personal favourite choice.  A lot of built in signal processing capabilities.
The IDL / PV-wave product is more geared to image processing, and has signal
processing functions as well.  You can design your own widgets which can
control your simulation.  Nice.  All these products are available for SPARC
2.  See comp.lang.idl and comp.lang.idl-pvwave for info.

There is not much in the public domain, Khoros being the only one that
comes to mind.  Its geared for image processing.  See comp.soft-sys.khoros
for more info.

If I had to choose one, it would be MATLAB.

Hope this helps,
Andy
-- 
         Andrew Ukrainec                 ukrainec@nimios.eng.mcmaster.ca 
          <    (*) >               /  \             < (*)    >           
Communications Research Laboratory      McMaster Univ, Hamilton, Ontario

In article <4272@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk> ph@physiology.oxford.ac.uk (Patrick Haggard) writes:
>
>Hi. I'm new to this group, and I would have thought this was a FAQ,
>but I couldn't locate it, so:
>
>be 1D waveforms like EEGs, but I often want to work with many
>channels simultaneously.  I want to be able to view them on a
>SPARC2 running OpenWindows 2, and to interactive things like cursor
>movement etc.  However, I would also like an underlying highlevel
>language for doing things like:
>applying builtin or userdefined functions to signals: a=fft(b)
>arithmetic signal manipulation;  signal3=(signal_a+signal_b)/2

Buy MATLAB and the signal processing toolbox. Expensive, but real good.

niranjan
(just a happy user of matlab)

I have used both IDl and Matlab for both signal processing and 
image processing.  As others have correctly said, Matlab is stronger
for signal processing and IDL for image processing.  However, IDL has
one important feature that caused me to settle on it for almost all of
my work in both areas:  It can handle bytes, 16  and 32 bit integers, 
floats, doubles, and complex.  Matlab is restricted to only doubles and
complex....a very severe restriction if you must work with huge arrays
as I often do.

IDL allows routines written in other languages such as C and Fortran to
be hooked into it.  Therefore, I write for instance, digital filter programs
in C and then hook them into IDL at run time.  I also have written a set of
routines that allow me to manipulate Exabyte tape drives from within IDL (using
the hooks mentioned above).  This way I can analyze several Gbytes of radar 
signal data straight from tape without having to first put the data on disk.
I do not know if this can be done from Matlab; perhaps someone will comment 
on this.

There is an anonymous ftp site with hundreds of well written IDL routines
of general interest.  It is fermi.jhuapl.edu.  Get into idl-pvwave and then
the next level down which I think is called jhuapl.  By the way, most of these
routines will also run under pv-wave, but I prefer IDL.

			Regards, bruce
--
Bruce L. Gotwols
Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Lab., Laurel MD 20723
Internet:  gotwols@warper.jhuapl.edu   (128.244.27.2) 
SPAN:      APLSP::STR::GOTWOLS

In article <4272@inca.comlab.ox.ac.uk> ph@physiology.oxford.ac.uk (Patrick Haggard) writes:
>
>Hi. I'm new to this group, and I would have thought this was a FAQ,
>but I couldn't locate it, so:
>
>I am looking for a high-level language/environment for viewing,
>editing, and manipulating physiological signals.  My signals tend to
>channels simultaneously.  I want to be able to view them on a

Try PV-Wave or IDL. Both have excellent graphics and interactive
cursor control and a very simple front end. 

In article <gotwols.713750652@warper.jhuapl.edu> gotwols@warper.jhuapl.edu (Bruce Gotwols) writes:
>I have used both IDl and Matlab for both signal processing and 
>image processing.  As others have correctly said, Matlab is stronger
>for signal processing and IDL for image processing.  However, IDL has
>one important feature that caused me to settle on it for almost all of
>my work in both areas:  It can handle bytes, 16  and 32 bit integers, 
>floats, doubles, and complex.  Matlab is restricted to only doubles and
>complex....a very severe restriction if you must work with huge arrays
>as I often do.

What you say is true for MatLab versions < 3.5i, but MatLab 4.0 is supposed
to handle all the data formats you mention.

>IDL allows routines written in other languages such as C and Fortran to
>be hooked into it.  Therefore, I write for instance, digital filter programs
>in C and then hook them into IDL at run time.

This can be done with MatLab 3.5i too.  There are demo routines provided
(e.g., engine.c) that allow MatLab to communicate with other routines via
UNIX pipes and/or files.

>  I also have written a set of
>routines that allow me to manipulate Exabyte tape drives from within IDL (using
>the hooks mentioned above).  This way I can analyze several Gbytes of radar 
>signal data straight from tape without having to first put the data on disk.
>I do not know if this can be done from Matlab; perhaps someone will comment 
>on this.
>
I haven't tried controlling our Exabyte drives from within MatLab, but I don't
see any difficulty in doing so.  Using the MatLab "engine" and UNIX shell
escapes (!), it should be doable.

>There is an anonymous ftp site with hundreds of well written IDL routines
>of general interest.  It is fermi.jhuapl.edu.  Get into idl-pvwave and then
>the next level down which I think is called jhuapl.  By the way, most of these
>routines will also run under pv-wave, but I prefer IDL.
>
Of course there are also vast amounts of MatLab code available (e.g., netlib).

There are many things I like about MatLab 3.5i (I'm waiting for 4.0).  However,
it doesn't do everything.  I'm surprised that a couple of the other systems I
use haven't been mentioned yet in this thread.  For 1-D signal display, I often
prefer Entropics' ESPS/waves+.  For symbolic signal processing, I use
Mathematica 2.1 with Brian Evans' Signal Processing Packages 2.71.  Although
MatLab, Mathematica, and ESPS/waves+ are expensive, hopefully you could
convince people, how could you not afford to have them?

Joe
-- 
.............................................................................
; Joe Campbell  N3JBC  jpcampb@afterlife.ncsc.mil  74040.305@compuserve.com ;
; My opinions are mine!   Happiness = Reality - Expectations, Click & Clack ;
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