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Infant Monitoring Device

Jack Followay, Jr.

Bret Hodge

David Schmidt

Thomas Supercinski

Kerey Tassin

Texas A&M UniversityDepartment of Computer ScienceCPSC 483 – Design Project

Table of Contents

Project Objectives............................................................................................................................... 3

Project Deliverables............................................................................................................................ 3

Project Background............................................................................................................................ 4

Project Overview (Block Diagrams)....................................................................................................5

Hardware Requirements..................................................................................................................... 7

Software Requirements...................................................................................................................... 7

Schedule............................................................................................................................................. 7

Responsibilities for individual team members...................................................................................8

Responsibility hierarchy for project goals/modules..........................................................................8

Team Structure................................................................................................................................... 9

Testing Requirements........................................................................................................................ 9

Percentages of Hardware and Software.............................................................................................9

Approximate Cost of Prototype..........................................................................................................9

References........................................................................................................................................... 9

2

Project Objectives

The objective behind the Infant Monitoring Device (IMD) is to create a device to replace existing infant monitors with a monitor that will allow the parents to view their child’s vital signs, such as temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing. The IMD will sound an alarm to immediately warn the parents if breathing stops or heart rate becomes abnormally low. It will also aid the pediatrician when it is time for the infant’s checkup by allowing him/her to view these vital statistics in advance and possibly detect early warning signs. This feature may decrease the number of pediatrician’s visits needed.

Project Deliverables

The final product shall be a device based on the PowerPC 403GCX evaluation board. The user interface shall be a GUI driven by a touch screen input device. This interface should be simple so the new parents do not have to spend a significant amount of time becoming familiar with the device. The entire product will include an instruction manual for the customer. The operating system will be VxWorks which will enable real time data acquisition. Sensors will be procured or developed which will measure vital signs by attaching to the infant and will interface with the device through serial ports. Drivers for the sensors will interact with a monitoring program which will control when readings are taken.

The device will come with two options regarding connectivity between the device and the pediatrician. One option is for the parents to interface the device with their home PC through an Ethernet connection. The UDP protocol will be used to transfer data from the device to the PC, and the PC will send the data over the internet to an Oracle database. This option will free the memory on the PowerPC board more often allowing more data to be taken. The second option is for parents who do not have a home PC or internet access. This option will store the medical data in on-board memory. The parents will then take the device with them to their pediatrician. The pediatrician will download the data to his PC using option 1. The doctor can view the data and either store it to the database or delete it.

Another deliverable will be the Oracle database ideally housed by the hospital. We will configure the database and run it from a server we setup.

The final deliverable is the application used by the pediatrician. This should create a transparent environment for the pediatrician independent of the connectivity options chosen by the parents. This application will be developed in Java or C++ and will run from the pediatrician’s own Win 9x PC. The interface will be a simple GUI that will allow the pediatrician to easily graph collected data at the click of a button for faster analysis.

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Project Background

A medical monitoring system can help reduce concern over an ill child by assuring the parents that the child is in a stable condition. The IMD is a device that a hospital will lease to concerned parents—especially those of children with special medical needs such as premature babies. A growing number of babies are sent home early.

Whether or not a child is born with special conditions, the ability to provide more detailed documentation of a newborn’s health status will help doctors diagnose potential problems before they become a dangerous condition. This device can be used to track daily readings of a child’s breathing patterns, heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure. The information can be analyzed immediately by the device for major concerns. The data is stored so that it may be reviewed later by the pediatrician for any long-term trends that might indicate more subtle problems.

This device will monitor an infant’s breathing patterns and heart rate in real time and analyze them for immediate concerns. If the heart rate or breathing stops for an abnormal amount of time, an alarm will sound on the parents end of the device warning them that something is wrong. This situation clearly shows the importance of real-time monitoring. VxWorks will be the operating system because it is specifically designed for real time applications. In order to keep overhead low, threads instead of forks will be used to scan the sensors and take the data. Threads will also be used to analyze the buffer and indicate when a write to memory needs to occur. The buffer will need to be large enough to cover the delay it takes to write to memory.

The temperature and blood pressure will be taken periodically such as before the infant goes to sleep and when they wake up. This is because the sensor devices do not lend themselves to be attached to the baby continuously during sleep. There is also not as strong a need to monitor these vital signs as there is to monitor breathing and heart rate.

Each of the sensors will interface with the PowerPC board through serial ports. There are a limited number of serial ports so the hardware will have to poll the devices and recognize what type of device it is and record the data. The interface between the device and the sensors will be done using Xilinx FPGAs and special drivers will be written to interface the hardware with the monitoring program running on the device.

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Project Overview (Block Diagrams)

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Hardware Requirements

To implement the Infant Monitoring Device (IMD) we will need the following components:

PowerPC Xilinx FPGA (possible) Ethernet Cable Network Interface Card for host PC Touch Screen and controller LCD display

Software Requirements

LINUX Operating system SQL-based database system PowerPC RISC Watch (IBM) Tornado Development Environment Microsoft Visual C++ Development Suite

Schedule

Week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12IMD Medical SensorsIMD Medical Sensor InterfacesIMD LCD Video InterfaceIMD Audio MonitorHospital System Configuration (Win PC)DB/Server SetupUser ManualFinal ReportIMD OS (VxWorks)IMD Application (GUI)IMD Networking APIIMD Data Transfer ApplicationIMD Sensor APIIMD LCD Video DriverIMD Touch Screen DriverIMD HelpData Organization (File Format/Compression)Hospital Application/GUI (C++/Java)Hospital Data Transfer APIHospital ODBC APIWeb PERL/CGI Scripts

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Responsibilities for individual team members

Jack Followay, Jr.:IMD GUI/OS, IMD Application, and source control

Bret Hodge:IMD Hardware interfaces

David Schmidt:IMD Interconnectivity (Networking), IMD Application, and MD Application (Windows)

Thomas Supercinski:IMD Sensors and Data Acquisition (software integration)

Kerey Tassin:IMD Hardware sensors

Responsibility hierarchy for project goals/modules

HardwareIMD Medical Sensors Kerey Tassin

Bret HodgeIMD Medical Sensor Interfaces

Bret HodgeKerey Tassin

IMD LCD Interface Bret HodgeThomas Supercinski

IMD Audio Monitor Kerey Tassin

TechnicalHospital System Configuration (Win PC)

Bret Hodge

DB/Server Setup Thomas SupercinskiUser Manual All

SoftwareIMD OS (VxWorks) Jack Followay, Jr.IMD Application (GUI) Jack Followay, Jr.

David SchmidtIMD Networking API Thomas Supercinski

David SchmidtIMD Data Transfer Application

Thomas Supercinski

IMD Sensor API Thomas SupercinskiIMD Video Driver David SchmidtIMD Touch Screen Driver

David SchmidtJack Followay, Jr.

IMD Help Jack Followay, Jr.Data Organization (File Format/Compression)

Thomas Supercinski

Hospital Application/GUI (C++/Java)

David SchmidtKerey Tassin

Hospital Data Transfer API

David Schmidt

Hospital ODBC API Thomas Supercinski

Web PERL/CGI Scripts Thomas Supercinski

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Team Structure

Team StructureLeader Jack Followay, Jr.Recorder Kerey TassinTime keeper Thomas SupercinskiGate keeper David Schmidt

Antagonist Bret Hodge

Testing Requirements

The senior design lab will serve as the testing environment required for the final demonstration. No special considerations will need to be made for the final demonstration.

Percentages of Hardware and Software

SOFTWARE (65%) HARDWARE (35%)

Approximate Cost of Prototype

Component Cost PowerPC system $0.00

Xilinx FPGA (possible) $0.00Ethernet Cable $15.00Network Interface Card for host PC $15.00Touch Screen and controller $160.00

LCD displayLinux Operating system $0.00SQL-based database system $0.00Tornado Development Environment $0.00Microsoft Visual C++ Development Suite $0.00 $190.00

References