Republic of Iraq

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

University of Technology

Control and Systems Engineering Department

Assignment Name

Applications of Microcontrollers in Medical Application

Micro controller :‫اسم المادة‬

DR.Mohammed Yousef :‫اسم التدريسي‬

Wasan Shakir Mahmood :‫اسم الطالب‬

Mechatronics :‫الفرع‬

4th :‫المرحلة‬

‫ صباحي‬:‫نوع الدراسة‬

2020/7/3 : ‫تاريخ تسليم التقرير‬

1- Introduction

A microcontroller is a computer with most of the necessary support

chips onboard.
All computers have several things in common, namely:

 A central processing unit (CPU) that executes programs.

 Some random-access memory (RAM) where it can store data that is variable.
 Some read only memory (ROM) where programs to be executed can be stored.
 Input and output (1/O) devices that enable communication to be established.
with the outside world i.e. connection to devices such as keyboard, mouse,monitors
and other peripherals.
There are a number of other common characteristics that define microcon-trollers.
Ifa computer matches a majority of these characteristics,then it can be classified as a
'microcontroller. Microcontrollers may be:
 Embedded' inside some other device (often a consumer product) so that they can
control the features or actions of the product. Another name for a microcontroller is
therefore an 'embedded controller’.
 Dedicated to oe task and run one specific program. The program is stored
in ROM and generally does not change
 A low-power device. A battery-operated microcontroller might consume as
little as 50 milliwatts.

A microcontroller may take an input from the device it is controlling and controls the
device by sending signals to different components in the device.
A microcontroller is often small and low cost. The components maybe chosen to
minimize size and to be as inexpensive as possible.

The actual processor used to implement a microcontroller can vary widely. In many
products , such as microwave ovens the demand on the CPU is fairly low and price is
an important consideration. In these cases , manufacturers turn dedicated
microcontroller chips-devices that where originally designed to be low-cost , small ,
low-power , embedded CPUs. The Motorola 6811 and intel 8051 are both good
examples of such chips.

A typical low-end microcontroller chip might have 1000 bytes of ROM and 20 bytes
of RAM on the chip, along with eight I/O pins. In large quantities , the cost of these
chips can sometimes be just few pence.
2- MCUs in portable medical products
Microcontrollers (MCUs) play a significant role in a variety of portable
Medical instrumentation products such as personal blood pressure monitors,
Spirometers pulse oximeters and heart rate monitors. In most of these products,
the actual physiological signals are analogue and need signal conditioning
techniques
such as amplification and filtering before they can be measured, monitored or
displayed.

Typical chip requirements in portable medical applications are embedded high-

performance analogue peripherals within an MCU operating with ultra-low power.
Today’s modern chip making technology brings this to a reality in a single SoC
device. It is realistic to find an off-the-shelf SoC suitable for use with portable
medical electronics applications operating with long battery life.

Analogue front-end design in portable battery operated medical electronics can be

simplified by using embedded high-performance peripherals such as opamps,
analogue to digital converter and digital to analogue converter integrated with a low-
power MCU. The MCU not only offers digital filtering and processing, but also
displays parametric results of physiological data such as blood pressure, lung
capacity, heart rate and blood oxygen.

Communication is possible with serial wired or wireless technology. These features

can all be added while meeting demanding power consumption requirements, by
turning off peripherals for a standby current in the fractions of micro amperes.
Blood pressure monitors

In this application a bridge type pressure transducer is

typically used as a sensor attached to an inflatable cuff.
The transducer can be energised via port pins only during pressure
measurement thereby saving power. The output from the sensor is
proportional to the pressure and is in the microvolt range.
This signal needs to be amplified before it can be digitised for
measurement by the analogue to digital converter. Amplification can be
achieved with the integrated opamps.

Spirometers

Spirometers, also known as pulmonary function testing equipment, are used in

medical diagnostics for measuring a patient’s lung capacity. In this application, the
measured parameter is air flow rate during inhalation and exhalation in litres/min.

The sensor used for this application is typically a pneumotach transducer, essentially
a differential pressure transducer. This application design is similar to the blood
pressure monitor except that an inflation motor is not required.

The rest of the application is straightforward, measuring the flow using the
integrated sigma-delta analogue to digital converter and comparing the measured
values against stored standardised values. The Flash memory is useful for storing a
variety of standardised values, making the design suitable for use with a variety of
situations. Similar to the blood pressure monitor application, the low power
operation of the MCU offers long battery life and high-integration reduces cost with
increased system reliability.

Pulse oximeters and heart rate monitors

Pulse oximeters are devices that measure blood oxygen saturation and heart rate of
a patient. In the commonly used non-invasive optical plethysmography technique,
oximeters consist of a peripheral probe combined with the MCU unit displaying the
oxygen saturation and pulse rate. The same optical sensor is used for heart rate
detection and oxygen saturation measurement in this application.
This technology provides an easy, accurate and
non-invasive way to estimate arterial blood oxygen
saturation and heart rate levels. The probe is placed on
a peripheral point of the body such as a fingertip, ear lobe or the
nose. The probe includes two light-emitting diodes (LEDs), one in the
visible red spectrum (660nm) and the other in the infrared spectrum
(940nm). Figure 1 shows this probe placed on a finger.

Fig.1 probe placed on a finger.

The light beams pass through the tissues to a photo detector. During passage
through the tissues, the light is partially absorbed by haemoglobin in the red blood
cells in differing amounts depending on the oxygen saturation level. First, by
measuring the absorption at the two wavelengths, the MCU can precisely compute
the proportion of haemoglobin that is oxygenated. Second, the light signal following
transmission through the tissues has a pulse component resulting from the changing
volume of arterial blood with each heart beat.

The two LEDs must be driven with constant current sources to guarantee a stable
brightness condition during measurement.

The constant current source with automatic gain control (AGC) feedback can be
derived using the internal digital to analogue converter and a simple algorithm
running in the MCU. The MCU can select out the absorbance of the pulsatile fraction
of blood – due to arterial blood, from non-pulsatile venous or capillary blood and
other tissue pigments constant absorbance.
Recent measurement techniques have reduced the
interference effects on oxygen saturation calculation.
Time division multiplexing, where the LEDs are cycled many
times per second, helps to eliminate background noise.
Quadrature division multiplexing is a further advance where the red and
infrared signals are separated in phase rather than time and then recombined
in phase later.

Saturation values are averaged out over several seconds. Depending on the
particular monitor, the pulse rate is also calculated from the number of LED cycles
between successive pulsatile signals and averaged out over a similar variable period
of time.

3- Embedded System in Medical field

Embedded technology in medical devices in one of its applications. There are so
many benefits of “Embedded technology” as well as use of graphical user
interface in medical devices.In today’s world heart problems are one of the
most common problems occurs in every second person in the world. So to
do continue monitoring we need something which can monitor the patient
for 24 hours. so yes cardiology is the only medical department that takes
maximum advantage of Embedded technology.

4- New age embedded Medical Devices

- Digital Flow Sensor

Digital Flow Sensor are used to measure respiratory flow in patients. It

also have some additional features in this we need to set such as offset
monitoring, self-test functionality etc. These devices can measure liquid
flow, so such devices can monitor the drug delivery functionality.
- Fetal Monitor Electronic

Fetal heart monitoring is done during pregnancy, labor,

and delivery to keep track of the heart rate of your baby (fetus)
and the strength and duration of the contractions of your uterus.
Your baby's heart rate is a good way to tell whether your baby is
doing well or may have some problems.

Fig.2 Fetal Monitor Electronic

REFERENCE :
1- https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bzTAMKnT3YUC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=
microcontroller+introduction&ots=MzwathitFj&sig=Ta906oDc9wzTJeOChdzzeKgh7bU
2- http://www.embedded.com/education-training/tech-papers
3- http://www.nxp.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/brochure/BloodPressureMonitors.pdf