Increasing use of electronic health records and telemedicine mandates that confidential and private information about the patient be protected and sent in a secured manner. A possible solution consists in watermarking physiological signals such as the electrocardiogram with that confidential information. In this project, we propose to use steganography to embed confidential information in an ECG data record. The algorithm should be simple enough to be implemented on a  smart phone. 

Prerequisites: The student should be competent with Matlab. Experience with biomedical signal processing and techniques taught in ECE 412 is desirable. 

ECE Supervisor: Guy Dumont

Contact: Walter Karlen

The One Laptop per Child  (OLPC) non-profit develops a low-cost laptop to revolutionize the education of the world's poorest children. With the aim to make a difference, we are designing a low-cost pulse oximeter that can be interfaced with  the OLPC laptop for health education and in-school diagnosis if respiratory diseases. We have developed a software prototype and have evaluated different hardware approaches.

The students will be working on the final hardware design (electronic design, interface, soldering) and driver development (signal processing and conditioning). The students will be focusing on low manufacturing costs. The students will demonstrate a prototype at the end of this project.

Prerequisites: The student should be competent with (bio-medical) electronic circuit design and with  C and/or Python. Basic knowledge in signal processing is required.

ECE Supervisor: Guy Dumont

Contact: Walter Karlen

Blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) measurements contain information critical to anesthesia, and can be used as an important first warning of asphyxia conditions prior to onset of cyanosis.  

The students will develop a measure of quality of the plethysmographic waveforms to automatically determine their suitability for further analysis in a real time clinical decision support system, and build a demonstrator algorithm. 

Prerequisites: The student should be competent with Matlab. Experience with biomedical signal processing and/or feature extraction is required. 

ECE Supervisor: Guy Dumont

Contact: Walter Karlen