General information

Dataview is a program for viewing and analyzing digitized analogue signals. DataView can also record analog signals, and, depending on the external hardware facilities, provide experimental stimulation. The program is designed with neuroscientists in mind, although it may be of interest to any scientist who requires time-series analysis of data sampled at fixed intervals.

Free and Licensed Versions

The free (unlicensed) and licensed versions of the program have exactly the same analysis and recording facilities, the only difference is that the licensed version can directly read various bespoke-format data files produced by commercial acquisition systems.

The free (unlicensed) version of the program provides viewing and analysis facilities for:

• Text files saved from another programme:
  • Tab- or space-separated text files with the extension *.asc or .txt.
  • Comma-separated text files (*.csv).
  • Files created by pasting text data from the clipboard from programs such as Excel.
• Files containing simulated data created using the built-in expression parser.
• DataView native format files with the dtvw-dat (or, from previous versions, flt) extension. These may be sample files supplied with the programme, files created using one of the facilities above, or files derived from commercial acquisition systems supplied by a colleague using the licensed version.

The free version also allows:

• Stimulating and recording using DataTranslation ADC-DAC boards
• Recording with the Arduino family of microcontroller boards
• Recording through the microphone input of a computer.

The licensed version of the program provides all of the above plus viewing and analysis facilities for various commercial formats:

• Axon Instruments files in gap-free or episodic format (.abf) including version 10,
• CED Spike 2 files (.smr).
• CED Signal files (.cfs).
• EGAA ECR-mode and scope-mode files.
• EDF (European Data Format) and EDF+ files (.edf).
• Wintrontech files (.vet).
• Sound files (.wav).
• DataQ files (.wdq).
• PicoScope export in Matlab format (.mat).
• Raw binary (.bin) files.
• Axograph (axgx) files with simple formats.
• MultiChannel System (mcd) files with simple formats

This list is being added to periodically, and I would certainly consider requests to add specific additional file formats.

The small license fee helps (marginally) to offset the costs of developing and supporting this programme.

What you can do with DataView

Generally speaking tasks in DataView fall into 6 categories:

• Viewing. DataView allows you to view your data as a continuous stream in a chart-recorder-like format or a rectangular matrix format, or as superimposed sweeps in an oscilloscope-like format. The latter requires events to act as triggers for each sweep.
• Transform data. You can transform data in a variety of ways, such as filtering, extracting sub-sections, scaling, performing trace arithmetic (adding or subtracting one trace from another etc.). The commands are mainly located on the Transform menu. Note, you cannot overwrite an original data acquisition file. If you alter the data themselves, you will be forced to write the changed data to a new file in the native DataView format. Native DataView files can be overwritten, since they do not contain original raw data.
  Most transform dialog boxes have a Preview facility in which you can see what the data will look like after the transform with the selected parameters. This can be a great help in tuning the parameters to achieve the desired effect.
• Analyse Data. Commands on the Analyse menu allow you to carry out a variety of analyses such as spectral analysis, curve fitting, correlation analysis etc., directly on the data themselves.
• Manipulate events. A lot of analysis is concerned with things that happen at discrete times, rather than ongoing continuously-variable data. Time-related analysis usually involves the creation and manipulation of events, and the commands for this are located on the Event edit menu.
• Analyse event-related data. You may be interested specifically in the time-characteristics of the events themselves (e.g. their frequency, phase etc), or you may be interested in the values of the data that occur during events. In either case, a variety of analysis tools are available through the Event analyse menu commands.
• Recording and stimulating. DataView supports DataTranslation ADC-DAC boards through the Open Layers programming interface. DataView can support up to 16 channels of data acquisition, and 2 channels of data output. DataView can also record through the computer microphone input and through the Arduino family of microcontroller boards.

There are DataView facilities that do not fall neatly into any of these categories (e.g. the ability to create simulated data, or the ability to play data as sound), and there are facilities that involve interaction between these categories, but this should give you a rough idea of what you can do and where you might find the commands to do it.

History and Comments

Transforming data traces and/or editing events changes the information content within files. To help keep track of such changes, DataView automatically stores the parameters used in the edits in a text format that can be accessed through the File: History menu command. This is purely intended for information – it does not allow you to roll back or undo the edits. You can, however, edit the history content to delete unwanted entries. This is useful if you try out the same edit with several different parameters and then delete all but the optimum edit. By default the history facility keeps track of each edit, but you can manually delete the discarded edits if you wish.

If you want to keep more detailed records of, for instance, the reasoning behind your edits, you can make notes using the File: Comments facility. The history and comment texts are an integral part of the native dtvw-dat file structure, and are kept within the same file as contains the data.

 

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