Wikipedia
PowerLab (before 1998 was referred to as MacLab) is a data acquisition system developed by ADInstruments comprising hardware and software and designed for use in life science research and teaching applications. It is commonly used in physiology, pharmacology, biomedical engineering, sports/exercise studies and psychophysiology laboratories to record and analyse physiological signals from human or animal subjects or from isolated organs. The system consists of an input device connected to a Microsoft Windows or Mac OS computer using a USB cable and LabChart software which is supplied with the PowerLab and provides the recording, display and analysis functions. The use of PowerLab and supplementary ADInstruments products have been demonstrated on the Journal of Visualised Experiments.
The original MacLab unit was developed in the late 1980s to run with only Macintosh computers to perform computer-based data acquisition and analysis. The MacLab product range was renamed "PowerLab" in 1997 to reflect the cross-platform nature of the system.
The PowerLab system is essentially a peripheral device designed to perform various functions needed for data acquisition, signal conditioning and pre-processing. Versatile display options and analysis functions are complemented by the ability to export data to other software (such as Microsoft Excel).