How do I interface a USB pulse oximeter with MATLAB?

Hey Guys, I am currently working on my final year project which is a study on apnea. I am using a NONIN OEM III evaluation board. The board communicates with the evaluation software through the USB port. I would like to read real time data from the board using MATLAB. I do have the instrument control toolbox but I am a beginner at serial communication. Can someone assist me if you have successfully interfaced a pulseoximeter with MATLAB? Thank you. http://www.nonin.com/OEM-III-Module

[Raymond Chiu]

The serial specification for the target board is found here: http://www.nonin.com/documents/OEM%20III%20Module%20Specifications.pdf

I have successfully integrated MATLAB Simulink and Python with pulse oximeters. In grad school, I built a photoplethymogram device that sent data through an RS-232 port directly into a MATLAB matrix using a .mex file and Windows API.

For future readers, I suggest that serial communications is easiest in Python and the data can be exported to MATLAB for signal processing.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

I have.

I haven’t used this code in 8 years, but they worked then. I updated ‘PulseOx_03.m’ a bit just now to change the inline functions to anonymous functions and some disk file references, but otherwise did not change it significantly. It could probably be rewritten to be much more efficient, considering upgrades in MATLAB (and in my programming abilities) in the interim.

I plugged the pulse oximeter (probably similar to the one you are using, at least by the same manufacturer) into the USB port and let Windows 7 find the driver. I then went online to find information on the pulse oximeter USB hardware and protocols with the USB manufacturer and model information. References to those are in comments in ‘PulseOx_03.m’

I am attaching two files, ‘getpulsoxport.m’ and ‘PulseOx_03.m’. You will have to go through them to see how they work, although they are reasonably well-documented internally. You will also have to make some changes to correspond to your file directory structure and references. (I do not remember enough about them to comment on them in any detail.) I will help with them if I can.

Have fun with them!