Advanced Signal Acquisition

Technical Medicine professionals must be able to analyze which types of measurements need to be performed and must be able to perform these measurements to assess physiological signals and detect certain pathologies or deviations from normal. For this purpose, they need fundamental knowledge on the characteristics of sensors and measuring techniques. In this course we will emphasize theoretical and practical topics regarding sensors, the acquisition of signals and the recording of those signals. The clinical application will be found in successive courses, like TM12002.

The sensors that are introduced in this course can be applied to clinical measurements in audiology, cardiology, pulmonology, neurology etc. They measure physiologic parameters like blood pressure, blood flow, EMG, ECG and EEG. To maximize overall system sensitivity and accuracy students will be familiarized with the detection limit of electrical and non-electrical quantities; typical applications in the electrical, mechanical, thermal, optical and magnetic signal domain will be analyzed along with circuit and system techniques. For electrical quantities, the detection limit in a typical measurement instrument is determined by offset, finite common-mode rejection, noise and interference. The dominant source of uncertainty is identified and the equivalent input voltage/current sources are calculated. For non-electrical quantities, the detection limit should be expressed in terms of the non-electrical input parameter of interest. Important factors are: (cross-)sensitivities, non-electrical source loading and noise in the non-electrical signal domain.

Furthermore, the working mechanism of the other electronic components of a measuring system like amplifiers, filters, AD and DA convertors and computer interfacing will be explained. After the course, the student should be able to design, simulate and build (simple) electronic circuits. In the end, the student will be able to discuss about the limitations and specifications of a measurement system on a professional level with an electronic expert. In collaboration with an expert, the specification of a new measurement system can be defined as a starting point for a design.