An economical and feasible teaching tool for biomedical education

There are many biomedical instruments around, and they have addressed a broad variety of clinical and technical issues. However, there is still a room for their improvement in terms of price, portability, signal to noise ratio, multi-channel work, universal and simple connectivity, on-line processing and running under standard software, user-friendliness. A real-time prototype system has been developed that attempts to address some of these limitations. It includes simple circuits for signal detection and modulation, microphone input and sound card for data acquisition and MATLAB software for demodulation, processing, viewing and data handling. In this paper we are concerned with physiological signals like electrocardiograph (ECG) and photoplethysmograph (PPG) and focus on development of effective laboratory teaching tools for the purpose of biomedical engineering education. The same principle can be applied to some other courses, as well.