The combination of superior front-end amplification and flexible, intuitive control software specifically tailored to the neuroscientist conducting extracellular recordings make the OmniPlex system the most advanced neural data acquisition and online spike sorting system on the market today.

A demo version of the OmniPlex software is available in the Related Documents | Downloads section below.

Note: The 96 and 128 channel OmniPlex systems are now available!

The OmniPlex data acquisition system is a compact, flexible platform for high performance neural data acquisition and powerful online spike sorting. The OmniPlex amplifier features superior common mode rejection and programmable analog referencing for improved artifact rejection before A/D conversion,  and 16-bit, 40 kHz sampling to ensure your spike and field potential signals are acquired with sufficient precision. At the heart of the OmniPlex system is powerful software with a variety of manual and automatic spike sorting methods, multi-user control, and mixed acquisition modes (single, stereotrode, tetrode).

Superior front-end amplifcation and referencing for more effective noise removal and neural signal acquisition.

The OmniPlex system features 16-bit A/D conversion at 40 kHz per channel for acquisition of the complete wide-band signal. Programmable analog reference electrode selection enables effective removal of artifacts prior to A/D conversion, thereby preventing any artifacts from exceeding the A/D range (unlike digital referencing after A/D conversion). The OmniPlex amplifiers have superior common-mode rejection characteristics for more effective referencing and removal of background noise and artifacts.

The analog low-cut filter in the OmniPlex amplifer is software programmable, which allows the user to try different values depending on the circumstances of the experiment and the movement levels of the animal. Software programmable digital filtering enables flexible, user-defined frequency cutoffs for separating the spike and field potential frequency bands.

OmniPlex Server

The OmniPlex Server visually displays each of the various hardware devices (headstages, OmniPlex Amplifier, etc.) and software modules (spike and lfp separators, thresholding, sorting, etc.) of the system. Analog filter cuttoff values in the amplifier can easily be changed by editing the amplifier device properties. The signal processing flow between modules is represented by lines connecting the modules.  The flexible arrangement of hardware devices and software modules makes a variety of new capabilities possible, such as mixed acquisition modes with some channels in single electrode acquisition mode and others in stereotrode or tetrode acquisition mode. The OmniPlex server is compatible with Plexon's existing online MATLAB and C/C++ Client Development Kits, PlexNet, and the online NeuroExplorer link enabling extensive real-time analyses.

PlexControl

The spike sorting software for the OmniPlex system represents the next generation in signal visualization, and easy-to-use spike waveform classification algorithms. Many spike sorting methods are available, including box sorting, line sorting, band sorting, and template sorting in time/voltage space, as well as contour sorting in feature space (PCA, Maxima/Minima, and others). Each method may be used to sort single electrodes, stereotrodes, and tetrodes online. Additional spike sorting methods are under development.

Continuous spike, field potential, and wide band signals are conveniently displayed along with all the spike waveform segments for online spike sorting. The most recent N waveforms acquired on each channel, where N is user-defined, are automatically maintained in a buffer by the PlexControl program, and may be viewed at any time to revise spike sorting parameters as necessary.

Per-channel analog gain and reference electrode selection is easily controlled from within the PlexControl program, as is the assignment of different channel groups to different computers on a TCP/IP network to allow distributed spike sorting control across multiple users. The OmniPlex software writes to standard Plexon .plx data files.