A reconfigurable, wearable, wireless ECG system.
New emerging concepts as "wireless hospital", "mobile healthcare" or "wearable telemonitoring" require the development of bio-signal acquisition devices to be easily integrated into the clinical routine. In this work, we present a new system for Electrocardiogram (ECG) acquisition and its processing, with wireless transmission on demand (either the complete ECG or only one alarm message, just in case a pathological heart rate detected). Size and power consumption are optimized in order to provide mobility and comfort to the patient. We have designed a modular hardware system and an autonomous platform based on a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for developing and debugging. The modular approach allows to redesign the system in an easy way. Its adaptation to a new biomedical signal would only need small changes on it. The hardware system is composed of three layers that can be plugged/unplugged: communication layer, processing layer and sensor layer. In addition, we also present a general purpose end-user application developed for mobile phones or Personal Digital Assistant devices (PDAs).
Borromeo
S
S
Electronics & Bioengineering Group, Rey Juan Carlos University, 28933, Móstoles, Madrid, Spain.
Rodriguez-Sanchez
C
C
Machado
F
F
Hernandez-Tamames
J A
JA
de la Prieta
R
R
D003020:Clothing; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000295:instrumentation*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D015716:Electrocardiography, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation; D013686:Telemetry / Q000295:instrumentation*