Biomedical engineering teaching equipment

Emona Instruments has been appointed as the Australian distributor for the CleveLabs range of biomedical engineering teaching systems.

CleveLabs has designed hardware, software and curriculum materials that cover 30 topics in biomedical engineering, bioinstrumentation and biomedical systems subjects with an engineering teaching focus.

Using BioRadio, a portable and wireless multi-channel data acquisition device, the equipment can be used to record physiological signals through a wide array of electrodes and transducers. Compared to traditional tethered equipment, the BioRadio is wireless and provides complete freedom of physical movement - users are not tied to wires connected to a benchtop box. The BioRadio is also completely isolated from mains voltages eliminating any electrical safety issues.

With CleveLabs curriculum materials students can safely design and test their own experiments.

The material covers 30 biomedical engineering topics categorised into four groups: engineering basics, basic physiology, advanced physiology and clinical applications. Introductory engineering lab sessions range from the basics of biopotentials to digital signal processing and statistical analysis. Basic physiology sessions introduce EEG, ECG, EMG and more. Advanced laboratories allow students to expand their understanding of a particular physiological signal, often using a sample database of abnormal clinical data. The more sophisticated lab sessions illustrate how the signal is used in real-world applications, such as myoelectric prosthetic control and alertness detection.

With CleveLabs, students can also design their own experiments. CleveLab’s open-architecture design allows any combination of electrodes, sensors and transducers to be connected to the BioRadio’s eight differential input channels, including any combination of EEG, ECG, respiratory, spirometry, oximetry, EMG and more. Each channel has configurable gains, so any signal can be monitored on any channel. In addition to the eight analog inputs, the BioRadio contains embedded sensors for monitoring pulse oximetry, pressure-based airflow and accelerometry, as well as an auxiliary DC input.

The CleveLabs software allows users to configure, collect, review and analyse data both in real time or offline. Software is LabVIEW based and is supplied with MATLAB and LabVIEW drivers. Students and researchers have the flexibility to design custom software applications, such as streaming real-time data into MATLAB for customised, real-time analysis.