Computerised method for acquisition and display of gastrointestinal motility data

A computerised system is developed for the acquisition and display of gastrointestinal motility data which utilises a purpose developed software program called ‘PC-motil’, running on an IBM compatible microcomputer. ‘PC-motil’ displays data during collection, writes data to disk file and compresses all data at the end of a study on to a single monitor screen for convenient overview. Any area of interest, in single or multiple channels, may be selected and expanded for detailed examination. This system is tested by the recording of gastric and jejunal motility patterns of 11 healthy volunteers in fasting and fed states. All antral and jejunal migrating motor complexes (MMCs) in fasting studies, as well as all fed motility patterns were recognisable in both ‘compressed’ and ‘expanded’ form. The reproduction of motility patterns by the computer based system was indistinguishable from that of a conventional analogue chart recorder. This computerised system provides a convenient and cost-effective means of acquisition, storage and display of motility data in digital form.