MICROCONTROLLER BASED ANESTHESIA INJECTOR

ABSTRACT: An Embedded system is a combination of

In the hospitals when any major computer hardware, software and additional
operation is performed, the patient must be mechanical parts designed to perform a specific
in anesthetize condition. If the operation function. An example is the microwave oven. It
lasts for a long time, say for suppose for 4 or is hardly realized that the oven actually consists
5 hours, complete dose of anesthesia cannot of a processor and the software running inside.
be administered in a single stroke. It may Another example is the TV remote control.
lead to the patient’s death. If lower amount Very few actually realize that there is a
of anesthesia is administered, the patient microcontroller inside that runs a set of
may wakeup at the middle of the operation. programs especially for the TV. Automatic
To avoid this, the anesthetist Anesthesia Injector system is also an
administers few milliliters of anesthesia per application of embedded technologies in which
hour to the patient. If the anesthetist fails to a microcontroller is used to control the entire
administer the anesthesia to the patient at the device.
particular time interval, other allied problems
may arise. MICROCONTROLLER
To overcome such hazardous A Microcontroller is a general-purpose device
problems the design of an automatic that is meant to read data, perform limited
operation of an anesthesia machine based on a calculations on that data and control its
micro-controller is effective. In this system a environment based on those calculations. The
keypad is provided along with the prime use of a microcontroller is to control the
microcontroller and syringe infusion pump. operation of a machine using a fixed program
The anesthetist can set the level of anesthesia that is stored in ROM and that does not change
in terms of milliliters per hour to administer over the lifetime of the system. A
anesthesia to the patient with the help of microcontroller is a highly integrated chip that
keypad. includes all or most of the parts needed for a
After receiving the signal from the controller in a single chip. The microcontroller
keypad, the microcontroller controls the could be rightly called a one-chip solution.
signal to the desire level and fed into the
stepper motor to drive the infusion pump in MICRO CONTROLLER Vs MICRO
proper manner. The anesthesia is PROCESSOR
administered to the patient according to the If a system is developed with a microprocessor,
stepper motor rotation (the syringe will move the designer has to go for external memory such
forward or backward direction). as RAM, ROM or EPROM and peripherals and
This particular paper will be very hence the size of the PCB will be large to hold
much useful to, physicians to see the current all the required peripherals. But, the micro
position of anesthesia of the patients. If the controller has got all these peripheral facilities on
level of anesthesia is decreased to lower level a single chip and hence development of similar
(set value), the alarm will be initiated to alert system with micro controller reduces PCB size
the physician to refill the anesthesia in the and the overall cost of the design.The difference
Syringe Pump to continue the process. between a Microprocessor and Microcontroller is
that a Microprocessor can only process with the
INTRODUCTION data, but Microcontroller can control external
device in addition to processing the data. If a
EMBEDDED SYSTEMS device has to be switched “ON” or “OFF”,
external ICs are needed to do this work. But with
Microcontroller the device can be directly pain. Therefore it is necessary to arrest the pain
controlled without an IC. A Microcontroller and the blood loss. Anesthesia plays important
often deals with bits, not bytes as in the real role in the part of painkilling. Hence, anesthesia
world application, for example switch contracts is very essential in performing painless surgery.
can be open or close, indicators should be lit or Advantages of using the proposed system are,
dark and motors can be either turned on or off Ø The need for an anesthetist is eliminated.
and so forth. Ø Level of anesthesia is not varied, so the
future side effects are eliminated.
AUTOMATIC ANESTHESIA INJECTOR Ø IR detector is also included in the system for
(AAI) monitoring the total anesthesia level for the
Major operations are performed to remove or entire period of the surgery time.
reconstruct the infected parts in the human body.
These operations will lead to blood loss and BLOCK DIAGRAM
pain. Therefore it is necessary to arrest the pain
and the blood loss. Anesthesia plays an
important role in the part of painkilling .AAI can
be defined as “Automatic administration of
anesthesia based on the bio-medical parameters
of the patient, eliminating future side effects and
the need for an anesthetist.”
Anesthesia is very essential in performing
painless surgery and so an Automatic
administration of Anesthesia is needed for a
successful surgery.
PRESENT SYSTEM USED
At present anesthetist controlled manual
operation is employed, which may cause many
difficulties such as,
Ø Level of anesthesia may get varied and there
is a chance of getting side effects in future.
Ø If suppose the anesthetist fails to administer
WORKING OF THE SYSTEM
the level of anesthesia during the
By using the keypad provided along with the
predetermined period, the patient may be
Microcontroller, the anesthetist can set the level
disturbed during the operation.
of anesthesia to be administered to the patient
Ø Other systems developed to administer
in terms of milliliters per hour (1ml to
anesthesia operates by sensing the
1000ml).After receiving the anesthesia level
consciousness level of the patient and not by
from the keypad, the Microcontroller sets the
measuring his overall body conditions.
system to administer anesthesia to the
prescribed level. It then analyses various bio-
PROPOSED SYSTEM
medical parameters obtained from the sensors
Now days, embedded systems are used in many
to determine the direction of rotation of the
applications in medical field for controlling
stepper motor. The rotation of the stepper
various biomedical parameters. In this design, a
motor causes the Infusion Pump to move in
micro-controller is used for controlling the
forward or in a backward direction and the
anesthesia machine automatically, depending
anesthesia provided in the syringe is injected
upon the various biomedical parameters such as
into the body of the patient. If the level of
body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate
anesthesia is decreased to lower level than the
etc. Major operations are performed to remove
set value, the alarm gets activated to alert the
or reconstruct the infected parts in the human
anesthetist to refill the anesthesia in the syringe
body. These operations lead to blood loss and
pump to continue the process. In this design, resistors decreases with increase in
the total timing and opposite flow of blood will temperature. The thermistors have very high
also be detected by using Micro Controller. temperature coefficient of resistance of the
order of 3% to 5% per ºC, making it an ideal
temperature transducer. The temperature co-
efficient of resistance is normally negative. The
output of the temperature sensor is given to the
amplifier stages. Resistance thermometers can
COMPONENTS REQUIRED FOR THE also be used to measure the body temperature.
SYSTEM Important characteristics of resistance
Ø Temperature Sensor – to measure body thermometers are high temperature co-efficient
temperature to resistance, stable properties so that the
Ø Respiration Sensor – to measure respiration resistance characteristics does not drift with
Ø Heart Beat Sensor – to measure heartbeat repeated heating or cooling or mechanical
Ø Micro-Controller – to Control the overall strain and high resistivity to permit the
operation construction of small sensors.
Ø Stepper Motor – to control the movement of
the Syringe Infusion Pump Circuit to measure Temperature
Ø A/D Converter – to convert the analog
information in to a digital format.

MEASUREMENT OF BIO-MEDICAL
PARAMETERS
The measurement of bio-medical parameters is
a vital process. These parameters determine the
overall condition of the patient. It plays a very
significant process in the level of anesthesia
that has to be administered to the patient. Only
based on these parameters the movement of the
RESPIRATION SENSOR
stepper motor is determined. Transducers and
The primary functions of the respiratory system
Thermistors are the key links in all sensors
are to supply oxygen to the tissues and remove
designed to describe and analyze the bio-
carbon dioxide from the tissues. The action of
medical parameters. The transducers used here
breathing is controlled by muscular action
are just those that find applications in patient
causing the volume of the lung to increase and
monitoring systems and experimental work on
decrease to affect a precise and sensitive
four parameters namely blood pressure,
control of the tension of carbon dioxide in the
temperature, pulse and respiratory activity.
arterial blood. Under normal circumstances,
Both transducers and thermistors are made in a
this is rhythmic action.
wide variety of forms suitable for use in
medical applications. They are available as
Circuit to measure Respiration
Ø wafers for applying on the skin surfaces
Ø tiny beads for inserting into the tissues
.
TEMPERATURE SENSOR
The most accurate method to measure
temperature is to use Thermistors and
Resistance Thermometers. Thermistor or
thermal resistor is a two-terminal
semiconductor device whose resistance is
temperature sensitive. The value of such
Respiratory activity can be detected by circuit package. The microcontroller design
measuring changes in the impedance across the uses a much more limited set of single and
thorax. Several types of transducers have been double byte instructions that are used to move
developed for the measurement of respiration code and data from internal memory to the
rate. A Strain Gauge type Chest Transducer is a ALU. The pins are programmable that is
suitable transducer to measure the respiratory capable of having several different functions
activity. The respiratory movement results in depending on the wishes of the programmer. It
the changes of the strain gauge element of the is concerned with getting data from and to its
transducer hence the respiration rate can be own pins
measured.
.89C51 MICRO CONTROLLER
HEART BEAT SENSOR The Microcontroller that is used in this system
Heart rate is our body's way of telling how hard is 89C51 manufactured by Atmel, MC, USA.
it is going. It is very vital that heart beat has to This is an advanced version of 8031.
be in normal while administering anesthesia to SERIES : 89C51 Family
the patient. Normal heart beat is 72 beats per TECHNOLOGY : CMOS
minute. A sensor is designed for monitoring the The major features of 8-bit micro controller
changes in the heart beat of the human body. ATMEL 89C51:
There are 2 ways of monitoring heart rate Ø 8 Bit CPU optimized for control applications
information from the body. They are Ø Extensive Boolean processing (Single-bit
Ø Electrocardiogram (ECG) Logic) Capabilities
Ø PULSE Ø On-chip Flash Program Memory
1) The E.C.G or Electrocardiogram, gives the Ø On-chip Data RAM
electrically picked up signals from the limbs Ø Bi-directional and Individually Addressable
due to the nervous activity of the heart. The I/O Lines
electrodes are pasted on to the 2 hands and the Ø Multiple 16-Bit Timer/Counters
left leg, the right leg electrode serving as the Ø Full Duplex UART
common or ground reference. The signals are Ø Multiple Source/Vector/Priority Interrupt
picked up and amplified by high gain Structure
differential amplifiers and then the Ø On-Chip Oscillator and Clock circuitry
electrocardiogram signal is obtained. Ø On-Chip EPROM
2) The pulse signal refers to the flow of blood Ø SPI Serial Bus Interface
that passes from the heart to the limbs and the Ø Watch Dog Timer
peripheral organs once per beat. Usually, the Flash ROM
physician looks for the pulse on the wrist of the The 4-kb ROM in the microprocessor can be
patient. The artery is near the surface of the erased and reprogrammed. If the available
skin and hence easily palpable. This pulse memory is not enough for the program an
occurs once per heart beat. These pulse signals external ROM can be interfaced with this IC.
can be picked up by keeping a piezo-electric AT89C51 has 16 address lines, so a maximum
pick up on the artery site (in the wrist). of (2^16) i.e. 64 bytes of ROM can be
interfaced. Both internal and external ROM can
DESIGN OF A MICROCONTROLLER be used simultaneously.
The design approach of the microcontroller RAM
mirrors that of the microprocessor. The The Microcontroller provides internal 256
microprocessor design accomplishes a very bytes of RAM. Theses 256 bytes of internal
flexible and extensive repertoire of multi-byte RAM can be used along with the external
instructions. These instructions work in RAM. Externally a 64-kb of RAM can be
hardware configurations that enables large connected with the microcontroller. In internal
amount of memory and IO to be connected to RAM first 128 bytes of RAM is available for
address and data bus pins on the integrated the user and the remaining 128 bytes are used
as special function registers (SFR). These SFRs A stepper motor transforms electrical pulses
are used as control registers for timer, serial into equal increments of rotary shaft motion
port etc. called steps. A one-to-one correspondence
Input/Output port Four I/O ports are available exists between the electrical pulses and the
in AT89C51. They are Port 0, Port 1, Port2 and motor steps. They work in conjunction with
Port 3. These ports are eight bit ports and can electronic switching devices. The function of
be controlled individually. In addition to this switching device is to switch the control
the ports also has pull-up registers to maximize windings of the stepper motor with a frequency
its use. and sequence corresponding to the issued
Interrupts command. It has a wound stator and a non
The AT 89C51 provides 5 Interrupt sources: exited rotor. Stepper motors are classified as 2-
Ø 2 external interrupts – INT0 and INT1 phase, 3-phase or 4-phase depending on the
Ø 2 timer interrupts – TF0 and TF1 number of windings on the stator.
Ø a serial port interrupts.
STEPPER MOTOR DRIVER CIRCUIT
Memory In Automatic Anesthesia Injector, a 4-phase
The memory is logically separated into stepper motor is used. Consider the four phases
Program memory and Data memory. This as S1, S2, S3 and S4. The switch sequence can
logical separation allows the data memory to be be used to rotate the motor half steps of 0.9º
addressed by 8-bit address. Program memory clockwise or counter clockwise.
can only read the information. There can be up To take first step clockwise from S2 and S1
to 64 bytes of directly addressable program being on, the pattern of 1’s and 0’s is simply
memory. rotated one bit position around to the right. The
1 from S1 is rotated around into bit 4. To take
ADC 0808/0809 the next step the switch pattern is rotated one
The ADC 0808/0809 is an 8-bit digital to more bit position. To step anti-clockwise the
analog converter with 8-channel inbuilt pattern is rotated to the left by one bit position.
Multiplexer. It is the monolithic CMOS device
manufactured by the National semiconductors.
It uses the principle of Successive
Approximation technique for the conversion
process. The 8-channel Multiplexer can directly
access any of the 8-single-ended analog signals.
Easy interfacing to the microcontrollers is
provided by the latched and decoded
multiplexers address inputs and latched TTL
TIR-STATE outputs.
The salient features are:
Ø High Speed and Accuracy
Ø Minimal temperature Dependence This clockwise and counter clockwise movement
Ø Excellent temperature dependence of the stepper motor is coordinated with the
Ø Excellent long term accuracy and movement of the Syringe by means of a
repeatability mechanical interface.
Ø Consumes minimal power. (15 mW)
These features make this device ideally suited SYRINGE INFUSION PUMP
to applications from process and machine The Syringe Infusion pump provides uniform
control to consumer and automotive flow of fluid by precisely driving the plunger of
applications. a syringe towards its barrel. It provides
accurate and continuous flow rate for precisely
STEPPER MOTOR delivering anesthesia medication in critical
medical care. It has an alarm system activated
by Infra-Red Sensor and limit switches. The
pump will stop automatically with an alarm
when the syringe is empty or if any air-bubble
enters the fluid line. Glass and plastic Syringes
of all sizes from 1ml to 30ml can be used in the
infusion pump. The flow rates can be adjusted
from 1ml to 99ml/hr. Since it accepts other
syringe size also, much lower flow rate can be
obtained by using smaller syringes.

SOFTWARE DETAILS
A program is required which when burnt into
the EPROM will operate with the AT 89C51 to
do the function of monitoring the bio-medical
parameters. The program answers the following
requirements:

Ø To read the input from the keypad provided

with the microcontroller.
Ø To activate the internal timer and enable it to
interrupt the AT 89C51 whenever the timer
overflows.
Ø To read the parameters such as heart rate,
respiration, body temperature once in every
specified interval.
Ø To check for the correctness of the parameter
values and activate the alarm set with the
system when the level of Anesthesia goes
down.
Ø To calculate the stepper motor movement
(increase the speed or decrease the speed) with
the parameters provided by the Sensors.
Ø Continue the above until switched OFF or
RESET.
To Summarize:
By using various electrical circuits the bio-
medical parameters can be found. The output of
the circuits is amplified by means of an
amplifier and fed into an A/D converter. The
digitized signal is then fed into the input port of
the Microcontroller. The Microcontroller
displays the parameters in digital value in the
display device. If the level of the temperature FUTURE ENHANCEMENTS
or respiration is increased or decreased the Ø Multiple parameters like Blood pressure,
level of anesthesia was controlled automatically retinal size, age and weight can be included as
with the help of micro-controller and the controlling parameters in the future.
stepper motor actions. Ø Specialized embedded anesthesia machine
can be developed, thereby reducing size, cost
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS and increasing efficiency.
The performance of the microcontroller was
checked virtually by interfacing it with the
computer. The program was written in the CONCLUSION
micro controller for analyzing the parameters. Modern technologies have developed that
Then the microcontroller was interfaced with promotes comfortable and better life which is
the PC using the Microsoft Communication disease free. PREVENTION IS BETTER
Port interface in Visual Basic 6.0. THAN CURE and protection is intelligent than
A Stepper motor designed in VB was made to prevention and our presentation on
run and the motor speed on various conditions MICROCONTROLLER BASED
was noted. When the respiration rate and the ANESTHESIA MACHINE is one of the
temperature were constant, the motor speed efficient protecting systems.
was found to be constant. When this parameter
was varied (by manually coding the change in REFERENCES
the microcontroller program), the stepper motor 1. Microcontroller and their applications –
speed was also found to vary with the aid of the Kenneth J.Ayalaa – Penram International.
microcontroller. 2. Bio medical Instrumentation and Application
– William John Webster.
Interface developed in Visual Basic