Chapter 1. Introduction

RASCHlab is a program based on libRASCH (http://www.librasch.org), which allows the user to access time-series data. Additionally the user can process the signals (e.g. perform a beat detection in ECG's) and perform calculations based on the signals (e.g. calculate heart rate variability parameters from an ECG).

The program provides access to different file formats (e.g. EDF(+), MIT/AHA) and displays the informations which are included in a signal. For example comments/annotations in an EDF+ file is shown and the user can edit a comment or add a new one. Or when ECG's contain informations about the position and types of the heart beats, RASCHlab will show the positions and the user can edit/delete/insert the beat positions.

This tutorial will show you the fundamental usage of RASCHlab. All examples are shown on ECG's but generally it can be used for every kind of signal.

At the moment libRASCH (the basis of RASCHlab) supports best signals used in cardiology (e.g. ECG, continuous blood pressure) by special plugins for displaying and processing these signals. If you have experience with signal processing in other fields and some ideas what would be nice to have in libRASCH/RASCHlab, please send me an email (rasch@med1.med.tum.de) with your ideas and/or source code.