Microcontroller-based fetal heart motion emulator / Norzulaikha Zakaria

The previous fetal heart motion emulator system was operated and controlled by a computer. The system was inflexible to be transported from one place to another and required a high cost to build due to the expensive cost of a computer. Nowadays, portable and cost effective systems are required. A solution to these problems is to design an embedded system that provides a portable fetal heart motion emulator. This emulator can be applied to assist biomedical engineer in testing a new fetal heart rate monitoring instruments. Here, the system used a microcontroller to emulate the fetal heart valve motions. A couple of aluminum strips were used in the design to represent mitral and aortic valves which were attached to a couple of electromechanical servo motors respectively. The evaluation on the operation of the emulator was done by transmitting ultrasonic waves from an ultrasound device to the valves' motion of the emulator. The Doppler ultrasound signals obtained from the emulator were compared with signals obtained from real fetus to ensure the signals produced closely mimic the real signals.