Despite nerve conduction study (NCS) being an established procedure in the evaluation of neuromuscular disorders, its utility has been restrained by commercially available products or approaches presented in the literature that are either costly, physically large, dependent on specialised medical personnel to operate or targeted to specific conditions, evaluating only one or two nerves. Therefore, the objective of this work was to develop a point-of-care device for NCS that can be used to evaluate several nerves, yet is still portable, low-cost and easy to operate. The developed device is composed of three modules: (i) controller module and graphical user interface, responsible for system synchronisation and configuration, data management, graphical visualisation of the evoked action potential and stimulus voltage feedback (maximum error of 3.92%); (ii) stimulation module, which operates in a constant voltage mode and delivers a monophasic stimulus pulse with amplitudes between 0.84 and 230 V, with a discrete increment of 2.32 ± 0.64 V (mean ± SD) and duration of 100 or 200 μs; and (iii) data acquisition module, based on the ADS1298 front-end that records the evoked action potentials after the stimulus, with a sample rate of 16 or 32 kHz, 24-bit resolution and selectable voltage gain of 1 up to 12. Results demonstrated that the system could reliably deliver stimulation pulses through different loads (100 Ω, 1 kΩ and 10 kΩ) and accurately record data through frequencies of 10 Hz up to 10 kHz. Additionally, NCS of the ulnar motor nerve in a sample of healthy individuals showed that the device could effectively activate a peripheral nerve and record compound action potentials within normal limits established by the literature.

中文翻译：

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基于便携式微控制器的电刺激系统，用于神经传导研究

尽管神经传导研究（NCS）已成为评估神经肌肉疾病的既定程序，但其实用性已受到市售产品或文献中介绍的方法的束缚，这些产品或方法价格昂贵，体积庞大，需要专门的医疗人员进行操作或针对性在特定条件下，仅评估一两条神经。因此，这项工作的目的是开发一种用于NCS的即时护理设备，该设备可用于评估多条神经，但仍便携，低成本且易于操作。开发的设备由三个模块组成：（i）控制器模块和图形用户界面，负责系统同步和配置，数据管理，诱发动作电位的图形可视化和激励电压反馈（最大误差为3.92％）；（ii）刺激模块，该模块以恒定电压模式运行，并提供振幅在0.84至230 V之间的单相刺激脉冲，离散增量为2.32±0.64 V（平均值±SD），持续时间为100或200μs；（iii）数据采集模块，基于ADS1298前端，该模块记录了刺激后诱发的动作电位，采样率为16或32 kHz，分辨率为24位，可选电压增益为1，最高可达12。证明了该系统可以通过不同的负载（100Ω，1kΩ和10kΩ）可靠地传递刺激脉冲，并通过10 Hz至10 kHz的频率准确记录数据。另外，