MultiElec: A MATLAB Based Application for MEA Data Analysis

Vassilis Georgiadis; Anastasis Stephanou; Paul A Townsend; Thomas R Jackson

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0129389

MultiElec: A MATLAB Based Application for MEA Data Analysis

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 15;10(6):e0129389. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0129389. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Vassilis Georgiadis¹, Anastasis Stephanou¹, Paul A Townsend², Thomas R Jackson²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
² Institute of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; Manchester Centre for Cellular Metabolism, Manchester Cancer Research Centre, Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.

Abstract

We present MultiElec, an open source MATLAB based application for data analysis of microelectrode array (MEA) recordings. MultiElec displays an extremely user-friendly graphic user interface (GUI) that allows the simultaneous display and analysis of voltage traces for 60 electrodes and includes functions for activation-time determination, the production of activation-time heat maps with activation time and isoline display. Furthermore, local conduction velocities are semi-automatically calculated along with their corresponding vector plots. MultiElec allows ad hoc signal suppression, enabling the user to easily and efficiently handle signal artefacts and for incomplete data sets to be analysed. Voltage traces and heat maps can be simply exported for figure production and presentation. In addition, our platform is able to produce 3D videos of signal progression over all 60 electrodes. Functions are controlled entirely by a single GUI with no need for command line input or any understanding of MATLAB code. MultiElec is open source under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 3. Both the program and source code are available to download from http://www.cancer.manchester.ac.uk/MultiElec/.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Animals
Cardiac Electrophysiology
Electrophysiologic Techniques, Cardiac
Extracellular Space
Microelectrodes*
Myocytes, Cardiac / physiology*
Rats
Software*

Grants and funding

VG and AS gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the New Horizons Research Grant Program of the British Heart Foundation (NH/11/3/ 29033, https://www.bhf.org.uk/). TJ and PT gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the University of Manchester (Project Diamond, http://www.manchester.ac.uk/).