TEXAS INSTRUMENTS ANALOG DESIGN CONTEST 2013-14

Name Of The College :

PES Institute Of Technology

(Autonomous under VTU,Belgaum)

Details Of Team Members:

NAME

ROLL NO.

COURSE

DEPARTMENT

SEMESTER

CHANDRASEKHAR
KR

1PI11EC135 BE

ECE

HK SACHIN

1PI11EC039 BE

ECE

KEERTHIRAJ N

1PI11EC059 BE

ECE

MOHAMMED
SAHIL AKBAR

1PI11EC063 BE

ECE

Faculty Advisor:
Name
Department
Designation
Email ID

: Mrs.Rajeshwari!
: Electronics and Communication
: Associate Professor
: rajeshwari@pes.edu

Name Of The Student Coordinator:

Mohammed Sahil Akbar

Contact Details Of Students:

NAME

EMAIL ID

CONTACT NO.

CHANDRASEKHAR KR

chandrasekhar.kowdiki@gmail.com 8123458676

HK SACHIN

hhksachin5@gmail.com

8762959463

KEERTHIRAJ N

keerthi.n250@gmail.com

9916878167

MOHAMMED SAHIL AKBAR

sahilakbar94@gmail.com

9538614406

TITLE

: DIGITAL STETHOSCOPE

DOMAIN : MEDICAL
OBJECTIVE:
Little mistakes you make
over time can pile up to pose big challenges
for your heart.
Heart disease is no longer restricted to the
middle aged and old.Long working hours at
the desk,very little physical exercise and
unhealthy eating habits are also taking a toll
on working professionals in their late 20s
and early 30s,experts say.

The auscultation of heart is one of the most common methods employed by physicians to diagnose
cardiovascular illness.The most common auscultative tool is the stethoscope.An experienced
physician can diagnose a wide range of cardiovascular abnormalities, however many abnormalities
are commonly missed due to an inability to apply selective listening of various components of heart
beat or a natural inability to detect frequencies outside the normal range of human hearing.
PROPOSED SOLUTION:
Phonocardiography(PCG) provides a graphical visualization of auscultatory
signals,allowing clinical observation of heart sounds characterized by frequencies outside the normal
range of human hearing.
The main aim of this project is to design and implement a digital stethoscope to detect the
unnoticed heart murmurs of low frequency during routine check-ups.
PCG techniques use heart sound signals collected from a highly sensitive microphone for heart
condition monitoring.
1.
2.
3.
4.

Harmless
Non-Intrusive
Light weight
Low level of skill and experience is required

KEYWORDS USED: Phonocardiography, Auscultation (Refer Page 9)

GENERAL BLOCK DIAGRAM:

AMPLIFIER
AND FILTER

SENSOR
HEART BEATS

MICRO CONTROLLER
(ADC)

DAC

HEADPHONE
OR
SPEAKERS

MATLAB

FLASH
INTEGRATION

KEYPAD AND
LCD
INTERFACE

STAGE 1: Designing the sensor

CHEST PIECE

MEDICAL GRADE
TUBE

ELECTRET
CONDENSER
MICROPHONE

3.5mm SHIELDED
CABLE

The stethoscope acoustic sensor is the integral component in the designing of the sensor.A custom
sensor will be designed to capture the heart signals which consists of the stethoscope chest piece
which amplifies the acoustic signals and a suitable electret condenser microphone to convert the
amplified signals to electrical signals.
Electret microphones(FET based microphones) were chosen over the capacitor based microphones
due to their good performance and ease of manufacture.They are used from high quality recording to
small sound recording devices and telephones.
A 3.5 mm audio cable was used for the microphone to easily plug the stethoscope sensor into a
standard jack, minimizing the wiring of the circuit and providing a clean way for the user to plug the
device into the system.
CONSTRUCTION:

Remove the stem of the stethoscope chest piece from the tubing. Attach a medical
grade tube to the stem of the chest piece. Insert a condenser microphone on the other end of the
tube. This end may have to be heated to facilitate the proper fixing of the microphone. The
microphone is then connected to a 3.5-mm stereo plug.

Most microphones generate very low-level signals, on the order of a millivolt or less. Hence we
always need to amplify the audio signal substantially.

STAGE 2: Amplifying and Filtering Circuit

PRE
AMPLIFIER
CIRCUIT

VOLTAGE
DIVIDER
BIASING

MICROPHONE

FILTERING
CIRCUIT

DC OFFSET
REDUCTION
CIRCUIT

Microphone in the sensor should be biased to proper operation.

Since output of microphone is very small(mV) compared to the precision of ADC on MSP430 which
makes it difficult for the micro controller to detect changes in the output of the sensor and
amplification is required.
The amplified output obtained should be properly filtered in order to capture the heart signals in the
range of 30-400 Hz and eliminating or filtering the unwanted signals which would cause a gregarious
error.Hence a low pass filter(LPF) is required which attenuates the high frequency signals.
DC offset is usually undesirable when it causes saturation or change in the operating point of an
amplifier.Hence the DC offset is suitably reduced by using a capacitor or an op-amp circuit.

STAGE 3 : Micro controller Processing - 1

MICRO CONTROLLER

AMPLIFIED
AND
FILTERED
OUTPUT

1. ADC Conversion
2. Sampling stethoscope sensor
output
3. Adjusting volume of audio
output
4. Flash memory integration
5. Transmitting data to MATLAB
6. Integration of LCD and Keypad

DIGITAL TO
ANALOG
CONVERSION

The amplified and filtered output wherein the noise has significantly reduced is
inputted to the micro controller which is the heart of the system.Since the controller requires digital
signals for processing,an ADC is used for this purpose.
In order to output real-time signals or recorded waveform to a headphone/speaker,a digital to analog
converter is designed.The waveform is also outputted to the MATLAB interface via the USART
module and SPI communication method from the controller.The recorded waveforms are also
displayed along with heart beats per minute(BPM) using an appropriate algorithm.

MATLAB INTERFACE
OUTPUT

HEART
BEAT
DISPLAY
ALGORITHM

HEADPHONE /
SPEAKER

Micro controller Processing - 2 :

FLASH

MICRO CONTROLLER
1. ADC Conversion
2. Sampling stethoscope sensor
output
3. Adjusting volume of audio
output
4. Flash memory integration
5. Transmitting data to MATLAB
6. Integration of LCD and
Keypad

KEYPAD

LCD

To assist doctors for the analysis of the waveforms for later stages in the absence of the patients,flash
memory is used to record and store the waveforms.To store upto 10 waveforms 1MB of flash is
required.

Since the controller requires 5V for operation and flash requires a supply voltage of 2.7-3.5V for
operation,a power regulator was used to convert the 5 V supply powering the rest of the circuit to a
stable 3.3 V supply for the memory.The micro controller communicated with the Flash chip through a
serial peripheral interface (SPI), with the MCU as the master and the Flash chip as the slave.

MCU
(MASTER)

5V

POWER
REGULATOR

3.3V

FLASH
(SLAVE)

KEYPAD AND LCD INTERFACING:

A keypad and LCD display were used for the primary user
interface of the system.These will be directly connected to the I/O pins of the controller.The keypad
will be used to toggle between several modes of operation to record cardiac waveforms, play them
back, and adjust the volume settings. The LCD was used to display instructions and visually see that
the system was setting parameters and switching between operating modes as expected. The micro
controller software was thus responsible for the operation of these two hardware components,
periodically checking the state of the keypad and updating the messages displayed on the LCD.

The keypad and LCD interface will provide a user-friendly means to input commands and control the
operation of the system. The MATLAB user interface will display the cardiac waveforms to assist
auscultation.

A suitable battery will be included in order to allow the user to use the system effectively without the
need for an external DC supply.
CONCLUSION:

The purpose of the project is to design a user friendly stethoscope which would assist
the user in identifying the heart murmurs and to analyze the output heart waveforms and also store
the waveforms for immediate future use.This is a low cost,light weight and efficient system having
many advantages when compared with the classical stethoscope wherein we can get the immediate
analysis of the heart signals along with the beats per minute.The obtained waveforms can also be
stored for the future analysis by the doctor. If given a chance of implementing this project,we have
future thoughts of improvising the system by using efficient battery management techniques and
improvised noise reduction methods.

REFERENCES:
1. http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/yuegroup/Teaching/ECE2C/Lab/Lab3b_new.pdf
2. http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/s2012/myw9_gdd9/myw9_gdd9/
3. http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/s2004/bcr5/index.htm
4. http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slaa334a/slaa334a.pdf
5. http://education.ti.com/en/us/educator-support/funding_grantstrategies/basic-proposal-elements
6. http://advan.physiology.org/content/36/4/360.full
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electret_microphone

KEYWORDS:
1.Phonocardiography : Recording of the sounds made by the heart during a cardiac cycle.

2.Auscultation : It is the term for listening to the internal sounds of the body, usually using a
stethoscope. Auscultation is performed for the purposes of examining the circulatory system as well
as the respiratory system.
(Reference from Wikipedia)