Introduction
Visual Lab is a research project aiming to find ways of integrating the measurement, storage, retrieval and analysis of behavioral data and physiological signals into a single work ('lab') environment. In this context 'behavior' includes movements, posture, gestures, facial expressions, speech, and so on, which is often recorded on video. The physiological signals that need to be integrated include heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, muscle tension, brain activity, etc. The Visual Lab project carries out research into how to synchronize measurements with different sensors, and how to integrate and store the data. The project also includes research into how the integrated data streams can be accessed, visualized and analyzed. The integration of behavioral and physiological data will enable researchers and clinicians to get answers to questions that are extremely hard to address with current techniques, which only allow measurement and analysis of all these different modalities separately. The research project is intended to lead to a platform on which future software products for integrated data acquisition and analysis can be based. The platform is intended to be an open environment that is able to support existing physiological data acquisition and video analysis software, and will have elaborate export functionality to commonly used statistical analysis packages. Integrated acquisition and analysis will have a clear added value in comparison with the current method of combining independent instrumentation systems. The Visual Lab project started in 1999 and will continue until the end of 2001. More information on the project is available on www.noldus.com/press/pr99_visuallab.html.

Aim of the meeting

1. Discussion and exchange of expert knowledge about synchronization and visualization of multimodal time-structured data.
   
2. Investigate participation of SIG participants as international associate partners in the Visual Lab project.
   
3. Discussion of pilot studies and participation in testing of software prototypes for SIG participants.

Meeting program

1. Short presentation of the Visual Lab project and its participating partners and associate partners (R.J.H. Trienes, 10 min).
2. Demonstration and discussion of data synchronization through post-processing by a pseudo random noise code (P.J. Hoogeboom, 15 min).
3. Demonstration and discussion of visualization of synchronized video and kinesiological data (A.P.M. Out, 15 min).
4. Demonstration and discussion of an Intelligent Data Acquisition Controller for synchronized and integrated data acquisition (J.N.C. van der Pers, 15 min).
5. Demonstrations and/or presentations by SIG participants (approx. 20 min).
6. General discussion about synchronization and visualization of multimodal time-structured data (45 min).

Organizers

• Rudie Trienes, Noldus Information Technology b.v., Wageningen, The Netherlands
• Piet Hoogeboom, National Aerospace Laboratory NLR, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Lia Out, University Hospital Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Jan van der Pers, Syntech, Hilversum, The Netherlands