Pulse Signal Detection System Based On Flexible Array Sensor

Pulsology is one of the most important diagnostic methods in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It has been a long time since pulsology is taken into studies. However traditional Chinese pulsology is subjective and not quantitative. Nowadays modern medical science pays more and more attention to be quantitative and objective. If we still only use pulse feeling in traditional Chinese pulse-taking process when diagnosing, it will be hard to be accepted by Western medicine science. Furthermore it will be even harder to be carried forward to the world. Therefore how to acquire pulse signal objectively and quantitatively according to TCM theory has been an issue of engineering must to be resolved. In this paper, we develop a new pulse signal detection system based on flexible array sensor to resolve this problem.We make a pulse transducer using special silicone in this paper. It consists of seven semi-closed cylindrical cavity structure. This new transducer can make good contact with skin, avoiding pitching or damaging the skin of subjects when rigid probes working in the long process of acquiring pulse signals. What’s more, we design a pressure controlling system to monitor and control the pressure when taking pulse. As a result, we can achieve the goal to get the best pulse-taking pressure in the acquisition process. We detect the pulse signal according to barometric pressure. On this basis we design the signal acquisition circuit, amplification circuit and signal processing circuit. The A/D acquisition system is designed based on the USB-7660 integrated chip. Through the designs mentioned above, we create the new system to acquire, store and display multi-channel pulse signals successfully.Finally we implement on-line debugging and calibration experiments on the prototype in order to test the accuracy and dependability of this system as well as get the best pulse-taking pressure. Experimental results show that this system can not only acquire seven-channel two-dimensional pulse signals effectively but also calculate the pulse width of the subjects clearly. More importantly, it can reconstruct three-dimensional topographic maps related to two-dimensional pulse signal which is different to previous studies.In this paper we design a new pulse signal acquisition system based on flexible array sensor. The innovation of our research is that we design a flexible pulse transducer to simulate traditional pulse-taking process of doctors and successfully acquire multi-channel pulse signals. This will provide new ways to make traditional Chinese medicine more objective and visual.