Arduino as an Educational Tool for Exploring Medical Signals

These days, gadgets of various kinds are an essential aspect of everyone's life. All these smart devices, whether they are watches, phones, rings, or wristbands, are built on basic sensors that allow us to continuously monitor our body temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, or sleep quality.

There are numerous accessible, simple alternatives to these sensors, such as Arduino-compatible modules, which, configured properly, can build effective continuous monitoring systems. Students in the Faculty of Medical Engineering learn the fundamentals of medical electronics, which they can use in the class projects, bachelor's thesis, or at work. Since signal processing is the foundation of most applications and devices for monitoring vital parameters, this study proposes including a medical signal acquisition laboratory in the Arduino classes. In the theoretical section, students interactively discover medical signals, and then, in the practical section, they acquire, visualize, and measure them. To ensure the accuracy of the obtained signals, an advanced medical signal acquisition system, Biopac, is also used, and the outcomes are compared both visually and numerically.