Microcontroller USB interfacing with MATLAB GUI for low cost medical ultrasound scanners

This paper presents an 8051 microcontroller-based control of ultrasound scanner prototype hardware from a host laptop MATLAB GUI. The hardware control of many instruments is carried out by microcontrollers. These microcontrollers are in turn controlled from a GUI residing in a computing machine that is connected over the USB interface. Conventionally such GUIs are developed using ‘C’ language or its variants. But MATLAB GUI is a better tool, when such GUI programs need to do huge image/video processing. However interfacing MATLAB with the microcontroller is a challenging task. Here, MATLAB interfacing through an intermediate MEX ‘C’ language program is presented. This paper outlines the MEX programming methods for achieving the smooth interfacing of microcontrollers with MATLAB GUI.