Wireless Telemedicine Physiological Monitoring

Center Based on Virtual Instruments

Tan xin, Guo Xing-ming, Cheng min, Yan yan

College of Bioengineering, Chongqing University
Chongqing, China, 400044
E-mail:[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— This paper presents a new model of wireless system of telemedicine which is based on wireless transmission
telemedicine physiological monitoring center, which is developed technology research also in unceasing starting with
by the Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering Workbench development, it has become more practical and convenient for
(LabVIEW) and integrates current general packet radio service medical and paramedical personnel to monitor vital signs from
(GPRS) technology and signal processing with DSP processor. At any computer connected to the internet.
the patient’s location, a wireless PDA-based monitor is used to
continuously acquire the patient’s vital signs, including heart LabVIEW is a graphical programming language that uses
rate, ECG, SpO2 and so on. Through the internet, the patient’s icons instead of lines of text to create applications [5].
physiological signals can be transmitted in real-time to a LabVIEW has provided communication tools, in including
telemedicine monitoring central management unit, and the unit ActiveX, TCP, UDP, and DataSocket as well as telemedicine
can access the data and the case history of the patient, either by panels and so on. In this paper, we have mainly utilized TCP
the central management unit or the wireless devices. This paper nimble and the reliable formidable function.
presents our prototype implementation of signal processing based
on a high-performance DSP-based personal server. The results This paper present the design and testing of a computer
also show that the wireless telemedicine physiological monitoring based low-cost vital sign telemonitor, virtual instruments,
center model is superior to the currently used monitors both in GPRS and DSP processor with a user-friendly graphical
mobility and in usability, and, therefore, is better suited to interface to display the vital signs and after the results of signal
patient transport. processing. The vital signs and patient information could be
accessed to medicine database with LabSQL under the
Keywords-Wireless telemedicine; Telemedicine physiological background of LabVIEW.
monitoring center; LabVIEW; GPRS; Neural network; Signal
processing
II. THE STRUCTURE OF WIRELESS TELEMEDICINE
PHYSIOLOGICAL MONITORING CENTER SYSTEM
I. INTRODUCTION
The telemedicine system consists mainly of four parts —
Telemedicine is the use of highly developed biomedical (1) the data acquisition unit, which is set up around the patient
instrumentation and telecommunication technologies for to acquire the patient’s physiological signal data, (2) the data
medical diagnosis and patient care, as well as distance learning reception and display unit, which enables the medical staffs to
[1].More and more intrahospital transport of patients is telemonitor the patient’s condition in real-time, (3) the data
required in order to perform special examination or therapy [2]. storage unit, which stores and manages the patient’s
The key to the success of all critical care transport is the physiological signal data, (4) the signal processing unit, which
continuous monitoring of vital signs including ECG, oxygen is able to help the medical staffs to analyze the patient’s
saturation by pulse oximetry (SpO2), heart rate (HR), and blood physiological signal data in the local database. Wireless
pressure [3].Spending time at a hospital could be an connection in this paper has been established by GPRS
intimidating experience, due to high costs, travel time, staying technology with speeds up to 40Kbps. Patient’s physiological
away from home and loved ones, less freedom to move, etc. signal parameter will be transmitted through Internet to the
With advancements in bioinstrumentation, computer, and telemedicine physiological monitoring center using the GPRS
telecommunications technologies now it is feasible to design wireless transmission module, and according to user
home-based vital sign telemedicine physiological monitoring commands, the telemedicine physiological monitoring center
systems to acquire, record, display, and transmit physiological can display waveforms in real-time, store data locally, and
signals from the human body to any location. trigger an alarm, shown in Figure 1.
Recently, the fast development of mobile technologies,
including increased communication bandwidth and III. WIRELESS TELEMEDICINE PHYSIOLOGICAL
miniaturization of mobile terminals, has accelerated MONITORING CENTER SYSTEM DESIGN
developments in the field of mobile telemedicine [4], and the

Foundation item: Supported by Spring Sunshine Program, Ministry of

Education, China(Z2004-1-55006)

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1-4244-1120-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE

 To achieve data acquisition, data storage, data reception application of wireless telemedicine monitoring physiological
and data display our main function is developed using center unceasingly reads the data from this buffer and displays
LabVIEW as the main language of instruction and HR, SpO2, temperature, and ECG waveform on the terminal
supplemented by C language. The signal processing module screen.
applies TMS320C6416T fixed-point DSP processor to realize
training and learning algorithms of neural network. On the server, we need to assign network port and IP
address of the computer, and create TCP listener with the node
of “TCP Listen.vi” which provided by LabVIEW for waiting
Data acquisition connection.
Patient

Wireless telemedicine
physiological monitoring Physiological signal acquisition
center（LabVIEW, DSP） sensors

Analog Signal Processing

Signal processing Display Data storage

Figure 1. The system structure diagram of Wireless Telemedicine Wireless data

communication with
single chip transceiver
A. Data acquisition
Currently the data transmission mode based on GPRS has
obtained the rapid promotion, especially in the extensive
application of each kind of telemedicine monitoring system. PDA with control settings
According to the practical application of economic and
serviceability, the data acquisition in this study is comprised of
a designed vital-sign signals acquisition module and personal GPRS module
digital assistant (PDA). Multiple vital-sign parameters, which
include the ECG, SpO2, and HR, can be measured by this unit.
This signals acquisition module acquires the ECG signal, and Internet
converts it into digital data. Through a single chip transceiver
connection, the PDA receives the physiological data and
computes the SpO2 and HR parameters. With regard to remote
monitoring, the PDA transfers these physiological data through Wireless telemedicine monitoring physiological
Internet to wireless telemedicine physiological monitoring center
center in real-time by GPRS, shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. Data acquisition and transmission based on GPRS
As described a wireless telemedicine systems in this paper
In order to establish a connection with GPRS module, the
needs to acquire many kinds of human body physiology signal
node of “TCP Read.vi” is used which is provided by LabVIEW
data, including ECG, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure,
to read out specified length of the IP data packet that
temperature and so on, so we need to gather the data carries on
transmitted by the GPRS module. In this node set up the mode
the classified pack (IP packets). This design uses the fixed-
attribute for ‘Immediate’, waits until the function receives any
length IP packet, it includes: 1 byte of data type +1 byte of
bytes, prevents the data overflowed TCP receive buffer, shown
effective data length + actual effective data (gathers data on
in Figure 3.
physiological signal) +CRC. In the transmission process, the
design makes use of time sharing and partition data methods to
transmit data packets for example: Transmit the data packet of
ECG first, and then transmitted the data packet of the breath
cycle, for the convenience of monitoring center server to
receive data.

B. Data reception and display

To improve the flexibility and reliability of the data
communication, we apply the TCP module which is provided
by LabVIEW to carry on the network correspondence
connection. The server terminal stores physiological signal data
to TCP receive buffer after receive it from internet and then the Figure 3. Receive data flow diagram with LabVIEW

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 Through such programming, the effective data can clear file "Sample Database.mdb" included with the
and accurate transfers to the display module, realizes to the LabSQL examples. Leave everything else as it is, and
physiology signal reception and display. And according to user hit OK.
commands, the telemedicine physiological monitoring center
can trigger an alarm in real-time, shown in Figure 4. • Close the ODBC control panel.
• Test the connection by running one of the examples
provided.
We can also use different VIs completed inquiries such as:
delete, operational changes, I will no longer makes the concrete
introduction in this.

D. Signal processing
This designs will address such new neural networks method
namely, new wavelet compression methods integrated with the
modular telecommunication design blocks and relevant
hardware DSP structures for enhanced integrated wireless
telemedicine systems. With recent development of high-
performance DSP technology it is now possible to implement
intelligent personal monitoring devices, and establishes the
artificial neural networks of medical service intelligence
diagnosis system.

Figure 4. The display board of the wireless telemedicine physiological

We use an artificial neural network (ANN) adaptive
monitoring center whitening filter to model the lower frequencies of ECG which
are inherently nonlinear and nonstationary [6]. Neural network
technologies, in combination with modern PCs and
C. Data storage communications networks, have the potential to extend
Due to the large number of physiological signal data delivery of telemedicine to those ordinarily not able to benefit
continuously transmitted to the server of wireless telemedicine from therapy [7]. This learning algorithm for the system of
physiological monitoring center, the volume of data is medical diagnosis will certainly bring new breakthrough.
increased so rapidly that it is needed to establish a medicine
In order to accurately and quickly realize this set of
database for data storage management. So this design makes
algorithm, apply TI Corporation's TMS320C6416T DSP
use of LabSQL to access medicine database.
processor to realize training and learning algorithms of neural
LabSQL is the beginning of an open source project to network, shown in Figure 5. The TMS320C6416T DSP is the
provide free, multi-database, multi-platform database highest-performance fixed-point DSP generation in the
connectivity support for LabVIEW. It is a collection of VIs that TMS320C6000 DSP platform. With performance of up to 8000
use the ADO object collection in LabVIEW so that you can million instructions per second (MIPS) at a clock rate of 1
connect to almost any database, perform SQL queries, GHz, the TMS320C6416T devices offer cost-effective
manipulate records, etc. Essentially it is a collection of VIs that solutions to high-performance DSP programming challenges. It
acts as wrappers for ADO properties and methods. It has used makes the network response speed, high precision, lay the
the Microsoft ADO object to provide connectivity in LabVIEW foundation for the design of neural network controller.
for Windows for any ODBC-compliant database, including
Access, SQL Server, Oracle, Pervasive, Sybase, etc.
Concrete operations: As with any database application on
Windows, you'll need to create a DSN (Data Source Name) in
the ODBC control panel. This DSN is used in your LabVIEW
application to connect to the appropriate database. If you want
to set up the example database, do the following:
• Go to your Windows Control Panels, and open "ODBC
Data Sources".
• Click on the "System DSN" tab.
• Click on the "Add..." button.
Figure 5. The Development Board of TMS320C6416T fixed-point DSP
• From the list of drivers, choose "Microsoft Access processor
Driver".
Due to the high volume of data signal acquisition, possibly
• At the dialog box, type in "myDB" for the Data Source in some situation the storage memory is insufficient. Therefore
Name. Then click on "Select..." button, and find the

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design call DLL through the node of CLFN which provided by its open source nature, it is free and easier for maintenance, and
LabVIEW to load the DSP routine (*.dat), thus complete the greatly improved the operational and managerial. Meanwhile,
development of signal processing system based on the DSP the development of design in the future we can introduce more
which has enough routine storage memory.DSP execute the file and better algorithms to add, so that assist the medical staffs to
named *.dat which loading to routine storage memory through make more detailed and accurate medical diagnosis for
PCI bus interface, and completes the neural networks algorithm patients.
on the DSP.
The loading DSP routine has well of transplant ability with ACKNOWLEDGMENT
the C language programming. Moreover, address C language This project was supported by Spring Sunshine Program,
integrated with LabVIEW may speed up the process and Ministry of Education, China.
improve performance of the software and enable sharing of
program modules, save the programming time.
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