PROGRESS 7 : WORK PLAN

The starting point of this project is the literature review and theoretical study. But, these actions are continuous as new information must be gathered from time to time in order to proceed with this project.

After having an overview of the component to include in this project, the suitable components were selected based on the scope and limitation of this project. Hardware implementations begin after the components were available. After that, the whole system was integrated for testing and optimization before the real demo and presentation to the panel of the final year project.

The time frame allocated for this research study is 10 months. It will start in July 2012 and is projected to be completed in May 2013. The Gantt chart for the project and its milestone are shown as in Table 1.

Development of Graphical User Interfacing using LabVIEW for analysis of the Photoplethsmography signal configurations for data centre application will be build to enables the community to visualize the impact and application of the proposed methods in determining the best solutions in designing it with respect to reliability and cost. This project will be presented in the FYP Presentation Day.

PROGRESS 6 : OBJECTIVE & BENEFIT/CONTRIBUTIONS

           OBJECTIVE

              The main objective of this project is to measure the temperature body by using graphical

               user interfacing (GUI) in Labview. Besides that, there have other objectives 

               which are related each other as shown as below:

1.      To detect pulsatile blood volume changes in the micro vascular bed of tissue from human body.

2.      To interface the PPG sensor to the computer using Labview.

3.      To save the acquire data for further processing and future reference.

BENEFIT/CONTRIBUTIONS

Benefit/contribution for using LabVIEW:

1.      Compiled code speed and ability to create distributable EXEs and DLLs.

2.      Powerful, flexible, and scalable design (open, connects to external libraries and third-party tools)  

3.      Easy to learn, use, maintain, and upgrade (intuitive graphical programming, using graphical constructs)

4.      One tool for design, prototyping and deployment

5.      Multidisciplinary use (same easy graphical programming language for different applications and domain experts in different disciplines in science and engineering)

6.      Tight software-hardware integration (supports wide variety of data acquisition and embedded control devices)

7.      Multicore-ready design (intrinsic parallelism) and support for different hardware acceleration technologies (DSPs, FPGAs, and GPUs as coprocessors)

8.      Multiplatform (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, RTOSs)

Benefit/contribution of using photoplethsmography:

1.      The only method to measure absolute changes in blood volume accurately in the extremities is by using chamber-plethysmography.

2.      Recently PPG is widely used in the medical equipment for patient monitoring and in laboratories for research and physiological studies.

3.      Small, reliable, low-cost and simple-to-use noninvasive (cardiovascular) assessment techniques.

4.      Advances in opto-electronics and clinical instrumentation.

PROGRESS 5 : METHODOLOGY

Block diagram

The following is the experimental set up for acquisition of pulse wave. Heart activities are senses from subject through the PPG sensor. PPG signals are taken from individual persons using Biokit at a sample rate of 1000 samples/second. The frequency response for PPG it is 0.05-10Hz. It is obtained by using reflection type PPG sensor, these signal are amplified using a PPG amplifier and are interfaced with the PC using DAQ (NI USB-6009).

 The NI USB-6009 is a USB based data acquisition (DAQ) and control device with analog input and output and digital input and output. The main features of NI USB-6009 are as follows :

·         Analog input (AI): 8 inputs with referenced single ended signal coupling or 4 inputs with differential signal coupling. Software-configurable voltage ranges: ±20V, ±10V, ±5V, ±4V, ±2.5V, ±2V, ±1.25V, ±1V. Max sampling rate is 48kS/s (48000 samples per second). 14 bits AD converter.

·         Digital input (DI) and digital output (DO): 12 channels which can be used as either DI or DO (configured individually). These 12 channels are organized in ports, with Port 0 having lines 0... 7, and Port 1 having lines 0... 3. Input low is between -0.3V and +0.8V. Input high is between 2.0V and +5.8V. Output low is below 0.8V. Output high is above 2V (with open-drain and push-pull as options). (USB-6008 has only open-drain output.)

·          On-board voltage sources (available at individual terminals): 2.5V and 5.0V

·         Power: USB-6009 is powered via the USB cable.

·         Application software: LabVIEW: Windows, Mac, Linux. The present document gives an example of how to use USB-6009 in LabVIEW.