Research And Design Of Pulse Data Collecting System Based On USB Technology

Medical staffs make a diagnosis by observing, listening, questioning and feeling in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and the "feeling"therein is the pulse-feeling. Normally, the doctor puts three fingers onto either of the patient's wrists and touches the parts called "cun, guan and chi"to get the physiological information, i.e. the pulse conditions of blood stream wave and arteriogram. Then further comparison with the symptoms pulse in his mind leads to the correct diagnosis. The key of pulse-feeling is to apperceive and analyze the sphygmus. Nowadays, with the rapid development in the internationalization of Traditional Chinese Medicine, researches on digitalization and standardization in Traditional Chinese Medicine are increasingly progressing and this generates Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnostic and therapeutic systems aided by modern computer science and technology. The Pulse Data Collecting System based on USB technology represents such a trend. It starts with digitalization of pulse diagnoses, gathers and redemonstrates the figure of sphygmus, which will greatly facilitate future clinic works of the doctors in Traditional Chinese Medicine. USB (Universal Serial Bus), designed by Intel, Microsoft, IBM, NEC and many other computer & telecom companies, is a criterion for connections of peripheral equipments with computers. Due to its desirable characteristics of fast speed, utilization of bus power supply, easy extension, convenient use, support on plug and play and hot plug function, USB interfaces are quite suitably applied as communication interfaces between host computer and Pulse Data Collecting System. Aiming at transforming the faint pulse signal to electric signal and processing it and the system responding the real-time pulse image, this Pulse Data Collecting System based on USB technique strictly follows USB 1.1 protocol. It utilizes high-powered ADC chip (made by TI Corporation) incorporating flash memory and kernel compatible with 8051 as the microcontroller to sample the signals, employs PDIUSBD12 chip (made by Philips Corporation) with parallel buses USB interfacing device and realizes system power supply through USB interfaces. In this system, the microchip system focuses on sampling signals and data communication, PDIUSBD12 fulfils USB interfacing comunication, and the microcomputer completes data acceptance, storage to database, data processing, display and other functions. The software designs adopt assembly language, C51 language to compile data sampling program and programs on protocol processing and data transfer conducted to USB interfacing chip. The data processing program for upper computer is compiled with C++ Builder language. The paper expounds on the design and realization of Pulse Data Collecting System based upon USB technique. It consists of the selection of sphygmus sensors; the choice and utilizations of USB interface chip, connection of circuit; the detailed plan on device firmware, device driver programs and applications; etc. A necessary description of USB 1.1 protocol is also presented here. Moreover, we have put forward the solutions and ways for the problems we met during the debugging of the system as well.