The software in this directory generates the PhysioBank Index. On the master PhysioNet server, the script make-pbi is run nightly; if any of the constituent data collections have been updated more recently than the Index, the corresponding segments of the Index are regenerated using pbindex and the Index is re-assembled by make-pbi from its segments.
pbindex accepts a list of record names from its standard input, generates index entries for them based on the contents of their .hea (header) and annotation files, and writes those entries to the standard output.
For correct operation of the PhysioBank Record Search software, the sequence of record names in the PhysioBank Index must be kept in (C locale) sorted order. make-pbi ensures that the record names are supplied to pbindex in the correct order.
The aftypes and sigtypes files are read at run time by pbindex; they provide up-to-date maps of annotator and signal names to annotator and signal classes. For example, the signal class ECG includes signals with a variety of (lead) names, such as I, II, III, aVR, aVF, etc. These maps are updated as data collections that include new signal and annotator names are added to PhysioBank.
This package of software can be downloaded as a tarball, or as individual files (below).