🔹 Suggested Lab Activities

1. Data Handling (Vitals Monitoring)

• Objective: Practice moving, loading, and storing data.
• Medical Context: Simulate recording of a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature into memory locations.
• Example task: Store 3 patient vitals at consecutive memory addresses. Retrieve and display them sequentially.
• Concept reinforced: MOV, MVI, STA, LDA, addressing modes.

2. Arithmetic Operations (Medical Calculations)

• Objective: Perform arithmetic using 8085/8086 instructions.
• Medical Contexts: Compute BMI = weight / height². Average a patient’s last 5 glucose readings. Add/subtract systolic & diastolic pressures.
• Concept reinforced: ADD, SUB, DAA, division/multiplication routines.

3. Decision Making (Threshold Detection)

• Objective: Conditional branching.
• Medical Context: If temperature > 37.5°C → store “Fever Alert.” If glucose < 70 mg/dL → store “Hypoglycemia Warning.”
• Concept reinforced: CMP, JNZ, JC, conditional jumps.

4. Array Processing (ECG Signal Simulation)

• Objective: Work with arrays/blocks of data.
• Medical Context: Process a set of sample ECG signal values (simulated integers). Find maximum (R-peak detection). Find average (baseline level).
• Concept reinforced: Loops, indexing, memory addressing.

5. Digital Filtering (Noise Removal)

• Objective: Implement simple digital filter logic.
• Medical Context: Smoothing a noisy biomedical signal (e.g., pulse oximeter values). Compute moving average of 5 consecutive samples.
• Concept reinforced: Looping, memory arrays, arithmetic.

6. Interfacing Simulation (Virtual Medical Devices)

Even without hardware, you can simulate input/output.

• Example: Assume sensor data comes from memory location 2000H. Process and store results in 3000H.
• Context: Glucose sensor → microprocessor → display memory.
• Concept reinforced: Data flow, memory-mapped I/O.

7. Mini Projects (Capstone within Simulator)

• Patient Monitoring System: Read vitals (simulated), check thresholds, trigger alerts.
• Pacemaker Logic Simulation: If heart rate < 60, increment pulse counter (represent stimulation).
• Digital Thermometer: Convert raw sensor value → Celsius → fever flag.
• Signal Analyzer: Find average, max, and threshold events in an ECG array.

🔹 Assignments & Case Studies

• Ask students to translate medical device workflows into assembly algorithms.
• Example: “How would you program an insulin pump to release insulin if glucose > 180 mg/dL?”
• Encourage pseudo-code → assembly translation so they see the clinical logic in simple steps.

🔹 References / Resources

• “8085 Microprocessor by Ramesh Gaonkar” – good for structured labs (can adapt examples into medical context).
• Online 8085/8086 simulators (e.g., GNUSim8085, EMU8086).
• Biomedical signal datasets (ECG, PPG, glucose trends) — even simplified integer forms can make labs feel real.

Haroon Rashid Hammood Al-Dallal Thank you very much for such a detailed and thoughtful response.

Your input will help me make the labs more applied and meaningful. If you have any sample code snippets, lab manuals, or references for similar projects, I would be happy to learn more.

Thank you again for sharing your experience and helping improve teaching strategies for this niche area.

Best regards, Tariq Ziad Kanaan

I had similar problems when teaching a course on "microprocessors" for the specialty "Medical devices".

After much experimentation and searching, I chose a great, easy-to-learn Assembler simulator that is not tied to a specific hardware platform:

https://schweigi.github.io/assembler-simulator/

I converted the original online version into an offline version, and supplemented it with scripts for indicating and entering individual bits.

This allows us to demonstrate the operation of the processor at the lowest level.

I believe that trying to tie a course on microprocessors to specific medical applications is not rational. But simplifying the course to the level of understanding of a non-professional computer scientist is a more reasonable task. A lecturer can describe specific examples of the use of microprocessors in medicine during lectures, and offer students to find examples themselves and come up with application algorithms. For students' extracurricular work, it would still be desirable to offer students to make and program a simple device based on Arduino.

If you are interested in details, send me a private message.

Vladimir Kubov Dear Dr. Kubo,

Thank you very much for your detailed and insightful response regarding microprocessor lab activities for medical engineering students. I truly appreciate the time you took to share your experience and the simulator resource.

I am currently using an 8086 simulator in my lab sessions and am very interested in exploring ways to better integrate the microprocessor course with medical engineering applications. I would be grateful if you could share further ideas, resources, or examples that could help make the labs more relevant and applied for my students.

Additionally, I would be honored to stay in contact with you to benefit from your expertise in designing effective lab activities and assignments for this interdisciplinary course.

Thank you again for your valuable guidance, and I look forward to your suggestions.

Kind regards,

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Proposed Topic: Simulating a Respiratory Rate Monitor using 8085/8086

Concept:

• Program the microprocessor to simulate counting breaths per minute from a series of input values (representing signals from a respiration sensor).
• If respiratory rate < 12 → display Bradyapnea Alert (Slow Breathing).
• If respiratory rate > 20 → display Tachypnea Alert (Fast Breathing).
• If respiratory rate is between 12–20 → display Normal.

Practical Activities in the Simulator:

Reinforced Assembly Instructions:

• LDA, STA, MOV (data transfer).
• ADD, SUB (arithmetic operations).
• CMP, JC, JNC, JNZ (conditional branching).
• LOOP (for scanning arrays and computing averages).

Medical Relevance:

• Links assembly programming to real-world medical devices.
• Demonstrates how patient monitoring systems operate.
• Helps students understand how simple program logic can translate into essential medical functions such as respiratory monitoring in ICU devices.