欧洲数据格式EDF

EDF是很多短语的缩写，比如Earliest Deadline First，最早截止时间优先算法、法国电力等，但这里要说的是European Data Format，欧洲数据格式。EDF是一种标准数据格式，用于记录多通道的医疗时间序列数据，其最早的出现是因为几个欧洲的工程师需要进行睡眠信号相关的数据交换而制定了一种统一的格式，即为EDF。后来又出现了格式更为丰富的EDF+，支持间断的信号数据，但目前EDF主要还是用在与多导睡眠图相关信号的记录。

维基百科的解释：

European Data Format (EDF) is a standard file format designed for exchange and storage of medical time series. Being an open and non-proprietary format, EDF(+) is commonly used to archive, exchange and analyse data from commercial devices in a format that is independent of the acquisition system. In this way, the data can be retrieved and analyzed by independent software. EDF(+) software (browsers, checkers, ...) and example files are freely available.

EDF was published in 1992 and stores multichannel data, allowing different sample rates for each signal. Internally it includes a header and one or more data records. The header contains some general information (patient identification, start time...) and technical specs of each signal (calibration, sampling rate, filtering, ...), coded as ASCII characters. The data records contain samples as little-endian 16-bit integers. EDF is a popular format for polysomnography (PSG) recordings.

EDF+ was published in 2003 and is largely compatible to EDF: all existing EDF viewers also show EDF+ signals. But EDF+ files also allow coding discontinuous recordings as well as annotations, stimuli and events in UTF-8 format. EDF+ has applications in PSG, electroencephalography (EEG), electrocardiography (ECG),electromyography (EMG), and Sleep scoring. EDF+ can also be used for nerve conduction studies, evoked potentials and other data acquisition studies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Data_Format

EDF官网也有详细说明：

http://www.edfplus.info/index.html