Design of a Novel Portable ECG Monitor for Heart Health

Abstract

Using the ECG analog front-end and ARM Cortex-M3 processor to develop a portable ECG monitor. The STM32 as the core unit, the ADS1292 as the acquisition analog front-end, it also includes a touch screen display module, an SD card storage module and a voltage conversion module. Automatic ECG analysis algorithms including QRS complex detection, QRS width detection and ST segment detection. ECG can be divided into four kinds of heart beat and eight kinds of arrhythmia rhythm using the extracted ECG parameters. The results have been evaluated on the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, the sensitivity of QRS complex detection was 99% and the sensitivity of heart beat classification was above 95%. The monitor can display the real-time ECG waveform and the current heart rate, to make recommendations for the subjects, and it stored the abnormal ECG waveform that provided to physicians for further analysis and diagnosis. Ultimately the monitor gives a composite score based on heart rate, arrhythmia and ST segment to facilitate subjects for heart health.