physiological simulator

[Lorenzo Sandini]

Hello,

Sorry in advance if this is not the right group for this, please allow
me a quick question. I have no programming skills, and I need to start a
project with minimal resources.

For teaching purposes, I need to model the variation of some biological
measurement in blood samples according to one or more external events,
and represent this variation in a graphical view, with an accelerated
timescale. (eg: a 24 hour period is viewed in 10 minutes).

The predicted variation can be increase in the biological value or a
decrease, depending on the external events. Some even can cause a steady
increase over 24 hours, some other event causes a decrease for a period
of 2 hours, etc... The effect of every event can be modelled
mathematically, and the result of all events represented graphically.
Some of the events are triggered manually at any time, and some random
randomly.

How would I approach this situation ? What kind of software can
facilitate the task, or should it be programmed completely manually ? A
colleague suggested Mathlab for that.

I appreciate any advice, and please redirect me if this is the wrong
place, thank you.

Lorenzo

 

[Victor Bazarov]

Sorry in advance if this is not the right group for this, please allow
me a quick question. I have no programming skills, and I need to start a
project with minimal resources.

You might also consider comp.programming for general questions like that.

For teaching purposes, I need to model [..] etc...
The effect of every event can be modelled
mathematically, and the result of all events represented graphically.
Some of the events are triggered manually at any time, and some random
randomly.

<shrug> Sounds like a complex enough system with UI (for entering events
that are "triggered manually"). Any high-level programming language
should be able to tackle that task.

How would I approach this situation ?

Start with the specification detailing the model, the input, the desired
output (including the graphics, and possibly some system state that
shall be saved to external storage).

What kind of software can
facilitate the task, or should it be programmed completely manually ? A
colleague suggested Mathlab for that.

Since I don't know Mathlab enough, I cannot really comment on your
colleague's suggestion. Software? For writing the spec you can use any
text processor of your choice, based on the OS you're using. Once the
language for implementing has been picked, you'll need the compiler or
interpreter.

I appreciate any advice, and please redirect me if this is the wrong
place, thank you.

I suggest a more general programming or software engineering forum, like
comp.software-eng, for instance. This newsgroup is not appropriate IMO
because we talk very specific programming language, and you don't have a
language issue as of yet.

Can your task be accomplished in C++? Sure. Considering the complexity
of the system (UI and asynchronous input) and the purpose (teaching), I
probably would stay away from C++, though, unless you're already
proficient (or have a professional resource lined up, which aren't the
case, as I understand it).

V

 

[K. Frank]

Hi Lorenzo!

Hello,

Sorry in advance if this is not the right group for this,

Well, this probably is not the right group (although it
hypothetically could be if you decide to use c++ for your
project).

please allow
me a quick question. I have no programming skills, and I need to start a
project with minimal resources.

For teaching purposes, I need to model the variation of some biological
measurement in blood samples according to one or more external events,
and represent this variation in a graphical view, with an accelerated
timescale. (eg: a 24 hour period is viewed in 10 minutes).

For modelling, especially if you don't have much in the way
of programming skills, a general purpose language like c++ is
probably not the best choice. You might want to look at something
like Excel or Matlab (or their open-source equivalents, OpenOffice
Calc and Octave, respectively.

...
and the result of all events represented graphically.

C++ itself, does not offer any graphics tools, so, again, you
might be better off with a modelling package that has built-in
graphics (such as Excel or Matlab).

...
How would I approach this situation ? What kind of software can
facilitate the task, or should it be programmed completely manually ? A
colleague suggested Mathlab for that.

By Mathlab I assume you mean Matlab. That could be a good choice.
(Or Octave, if you want to save a little money.)

You would probably only want to program this "completely manually"
if you're doing something very unusual that doesn't map to various
standard algorithms, or if super performance is absolutely necessary.

If you were to program it manually, then c++ could be a good choice
(if coupled with some library to support your graphical needs such
as qt / qwt).

I appreciate any advice, and please redirect me if this is the wrong
place, thank you.

I don't know this for a fact, but I bet that Matlab (and Octave)
have active mailing lists (or groups or forums or such) that
would probably be very good sources of advice for your project
(if, of course, you choose to use Matlab or Octave as your modelling
platform).

Lorenzo

Sorry not to be able to be of more help, but this group is
pretty much just about the c++ language itself.


Good luck.


K. Frank

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

[Followup-To: comp.programming like someone else suggested]

C++ itself, does not offer any graphics tools, so, again, you
might be better off with a modelling package that has built-in
graphics (such as Excel or Matlab).

To me that's just a sign that the problem should be split in two
parts: calculation and visualization. This could be two different
programs, one in (perhaps) C++ which generates the data in some
suitable format, and one other which displays it. Or the second one
could convert the data to some standard animation format, which you
could view with standard software.

Let people who are good at it make the GUIs, so you can concentate on
modeling. This split also make testing far, far easier. It's a
well-known technique.

/Jorgen