HAND HELD GRAPHICAL LCD OSCILLOSCOPE FOR THE DISPLAY OF

BIOMEDICAL SIGNALS
-BY KUMARASWAMY HOLLA V

ABSTRACT:

Usually all the biomedical circuits are of very low voltages [under 5V] and are
of low frequency. So, a handheld oscilloscope is advantageous when we are
supposed to see the biomedical signal and also for any analog experiments for
voltage below 5V and frequency below 30 Kilohertz. The components used for
constructing this handheld graphical LCD oscilloscope costs within 1500 rupees.
This can be made to measure voltage above 5V and within 28V by the help of
digital pots being interfaced to microcontroller in future advancements. It can
also be made to measure frequencies above 5M-Hz by using 32bit-
microcontroller having a sampling frequency above 30M-Hz in future
advancements. This is a portable device which can be carried anywhere for
testing circuits of voltages below 5V and frequency below 30 Kilohertz. So this
is more advantageous compared to most of the oscilloscopes which were
analogous in nature.
 1) INTRODUCTION:

ANALOG
INPUT A0
Wrt ground
[128 Х 64] GRAPHICAL
LCD

Clock circuit
PIC
MICROCONTROLLER

Power source

Using a PIC18F452 microcontroller and a JHD128464 graphical LCD a simple and

accurate graphical oscilloscope can be built. The oscilloscope measures the average
voltage, the maximum voltage, the minimum voltage, the peak-to-peak voltage, and the
zero-crossing frequency for a DC signal over 100 samples. The oscilloscope has a built in
edge trigger function that can be set to capture on rise or fall (or disabled altogether). The
time scale for the display is variable and can be easily redefined using the change Time
Division function. Likewise, the voltage range can be change to 0-5V, 0-2.5V, and 0-
1.25V. The main limitations of this oscilloscope include relatively slow acquisition time
and sampling rate (~60 kHz) and the fact that the inputs are limited by the constraints of
the internal ADC.

Power source consists of IC7805, 6F22 battery of 9V. The voltage of 9V is converted to
5V. 10K pot is used to adjust the contrast of the oscilloscope. 10 M Hz crystal oscillators
is used for external clock frequency of the PIC microcontroller. The input voltage is
given at the 1st analog input wrt ground for the PIC microcontroller to display the voltage
along with its average voltage, the maximum voltage, the minimum voltage, the peak-to-
peak voltage and also the waveform on graphical lcd.
 2) BIO-MEDICAL CIRCUITS:

ECG:
The ECG system is shown on Figure 1. The ECG system comprises four stages, each
stage is as following:
(1) The first stage is a transducer: AgCl electrode, which convert ECG into electrical
voltage. The voltage is in the range of 1 mV ~ 5 mV.

(2) The second stage is an instrumentation amplifier (Analog Device, AD624), which has
a very high CMRR (90dB) and high gain (1000), with power supply +9V and -9V.

(3) We use an opto-coupler (NEC PS2506) to isolate the In-Amp and output.

(4) After the opto-coupler is a bandpass filter of 0.04 Hz to 150 Hz filter. It?s
implemented by cascading a low-pass filter and a high pass filter.

Figure 1 Function blocks of the ECG system

ECG Signal

The basic structure of the heart is shown on Figure 2. Measuring at different region
of the heart will retrieve different biopotential. And, so that it will generate different
ECG waveforms. The ECG generated by each cardiac cycle is summarized on Table 1.

Figure 2 Basic structure of the heart. RA is the right atrium, RV is the right ventricle; LA
is the left atrium, and LV is the left ventricle.
 Duration at 75 bpm
Event Characteristics
(0.8 second cycle)
AV valves opened.
Atrial diastole
Semilunar valves close. 0.4 seconds
Ventricular
diastole
Ventricular filling.
Atrial systole AV valves open.
0.1 seconds
Ventricular Semilunar valves closed.
diastole Ventricular filling.
AV valves closed.
Atrial diastole
Semilunar valves open.
0.3 seconds
Ventricular systole
Blood pumped into aorta
and pulmonary artery.

Table 1 Duration and characteristics of each major event in the cardiac cycle.

The ECG is converted into electrical voltage by electrodes. A typical surface

electrode used for ECG recording is made of Ag/AgCl, as shown on Figure 3. The
disposable electrodes are attached to the patients? skin and can be easily removed.

Figure 3 A disposable surface electrode.

The cardiac mechanism of ECG is shown on Figure 4. In the top figure, the
electrocardiogram (ECG) initiates the cardiac cycle. The cardiac sounds are also shown.
The bottom figure shows that ejection occurs when the pressure in the left ventricle
exceeds that in the arteries.

Once the electrodes convert the ECG into electrical voltage, these voltage can be fed
into an instrumentation amplifier, and then be processed.
 Figure 4 The ECG cardiac cycle.

We measure the ECG by connecting two electrodes on the right and left chest
respectively, as shown on Figure 5. The body should be connected to ground of the
circuits, so that we connect the leg to the ground. If the body is not grounded, no signal
would be obtained.

Figure 5 Simplified ECG recording system

 Plethysmograph

The plethysmograph that we built works on the principle that the amount of transmitted
infrared light through a subject's finger is a function of the blood flow in the finger. That
is, when the heart pumps there is an influx of blood into the tip of the finger. This leads to
a decrease in the light received by the infrared sensor, which can be measured. Heart rate
is a key component in the polygraph since under certain stressful conditions; the subject's
heart rate will increase. The circuit shown amplifies this signal by approximately 10000x
in two 100x steps (the gain, in fact, can be optimally tweaked using the 10k trim pot) and
filters out unwanted noise. Note that the capacitors are tantalum so that they can
withstand some reverse bias. The IR LED and photodiode sensor were mounted opposing
each other on a the polygraph board. A hole in the polygraph board was drilled for the IR
emitter to eliminate any interference. A measurement is acquired by having the subject
places his finger between the elements and remain reasonably still.
 GSR meter

Perhaps the most common polygraph instrument, a GSR meter measure the subject's skin
resistance. Under stress a person will begin to perspire, reducing the resistance measured
between two electrodes. The circuit, shown to the right, is a simple voltage divider
followed by a voltage follower. The resistors were chosen to be within the same
magnitude as the subject's resistance so that there will significant variation in the output
signal. We also set the equilibrium voltage at the intermediate node to 2.5V by pairing
the resistors. Additionally, since this is the only part of the polygraph that sends current
through the subject, we took careful care to chose a moderate upper voltage of 5V. The
subject touches the two electrodes (circles in the schematic) with the tips of the middle
and ring fingers. When the resistance across the electrodes falls, the voltage at the
intermediate node also falls because the parallel resistance in the bottom half of the
divider is reduced.
BREATHING RATE METER

The breathing rate meter has a similar design to that of the plethymograph, except that in
this case, we use a thermistor as our sensor. The thermistor is placed near the subject's
mouth using a facemask such that upon exhaling the temperature increases (after a brief
amount of time, or upon inhaling, the temperature decreases to its original value). The
circuit shown amplifies this signal 100x and biases it up to 1.4V using two 1N4001
diodes. In our tests, we noticed some clipping on the upper rail. Given more time, we
might have modified the design. As it is, we could tell when a breath occurred, so we did
not pursue this problem.
 3) ABOUT THE PROJECT:

ANALOG
INPUT
Wrt ground A0

[128 Х 64] GRAPHICAL

LCD
Clock circuit

PIC
MICROCONTROLLER

Power source

The above block diagram illustrates the external connections given to the
microcontroller. The clock circuit connected to microcontroller has the clock
frequency of 10mega hertz. The power supply has 9volt which will be regulated to
5volts using IC7805 which is a voltage regulator. The analog input should be less
than or equal to 5 volts because more than 5volt input will damage the
microcontroller.

The 128 Х 64 graphical display is used to display the signal with measures the
average voltage, the maximum voltage, the minimum voltage, the peak-to-peak
voltage, and the zero-crossing frequency for a DC signal over 100 samples. It has a
sampling frequency of 60 kilo hertz. So it can display any type of signal from 0 Hertz
to 30 Kilohertz.

Usually all the biomedical circuits are of very low voltages [under 5V] and are of low
frequency. So, a handheld oscilloscope is advantageous when we are supposed to see
the biomedical signal and also for any analog experiments for voltage below 5V and
frequency below 30 Kilohertz.
 4) THE COMPONENTS REQUIRED FOR HANDHELD OSCILLOSCOPE:

COMPONENT SPECIFICATION NUMBER

128 Х 64 GRAPHICAL LCD JHD 12864 1
MICROCONTROLLER 18F452 1
VOLTAGE REGULATOR 7805 1
CLOCK CIRCUIT 10MHz CRYSTAL CLOCK 1
DEMO BOARD PIC DEMO BOARD 1
9V BATTERY 6F22 1
RESISTOR POT 10KΩ 1
CONNECTING WIRES BURG STICK 27
CONNECTING WIRES

5) CONCLUSION:

Usually all the biomedical circuits are of very low voltages [under 5V] and are of low
frequency. So, a handheld oscilloscope is advantageous when we are supposed to see
the biomedical signal and also for any analog experiments for voltage below 5V and
frequency below 30 Kilohertz. The components used for constructing this handheld
graphical LCD oscilloscope costs within 1500 rupees. This can be made to measure
voltage above 5V and within 28V by the help of digital pots being interfaced to
microcontroller in future advancements. It can also be made to measure frequencies
above 5M-Hz by using 32bit-microcontroller having a sampling frequency above
30M-Hz in future advancements. This is a portable device which can be carried
anywhere for testing circuits of voltages below 5V and frequency below 30 Kilohertz.
So this is more advantageous compared to most of the oscilloscopes which were
analogous in nature.

6) REFERENCES:

REFERENCE BOOKS:

1) HUMAN ANATOMY AND PHISIOLOGY BY ANNE WAUGH & ALLISON

GRANT;
2) HAND BOOK OF BIOMEDICAL INSTRUMENTATION –BY
R.S.KHANDPUR.
3) D.K. Mason and D.M. Chislom, “Salivary glands in health and disease,”;
4) M.J.A. Campbell, “Sugar in the saliva of the non-diabetic and the diabetic;
5) E. Yavuzyilmaz, O. Yumak and T. Akdoganli, “The alteration of whole
Saliva constitution in patients with diabetes mellitus,”
 6) THE 8051 MICROCONTROLLER AND EMBEDDED SYSTEMS-
MUHAMMAD ALI MAZIDI AND JANICE GILLISPIE MAZIDI.
7) BIOMEDICAL INSTRUMENTATION & MEASUREMENTS –BY LESLIE
CROMWELL, FRED J.WEIBELL, ERICH A. PFEIFFER.
8) ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS –TECHNICAL PUBLICATIONS.
9) PIC MICROCONTROLLER AND EMBEDDE SYSTEMS

REFERENCE WEBSITES:
1) http://www.wikipediaeencyclopediae.com
2) http://www.microchip.com
3) http://www.datasheetcatalog.com
4) http://www.ztecinstruments.com
5) http://members.chello.nl/~h.dijkstra19/page3.html
6) https://www.cs.tcd.ie/courses/baict/bac/jf/labs/scope/oscilloscope.html
7) http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/54855-97008.pdf
8) http://bsp.pdx.edu/
9) http://as.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471345407.html