Portable ECG Monitoring System

The number of patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is rapidly increasing in the world. Many CVDs are likely to manifest their symptoms some time prior to the onset of any adverse or catastrophic events, and early detection of cardiac abnormalities is incredibly important. To reduce the risks of life-threatening arrhythmia, it is necessary to develop and introduce portable systems for monitoring the state of the heart in conditions of free activity. This paper presents the second generation (prototype) of a portable cardiac analyzer and the developed system for non-invasive cardiac diagnostics. The portable cardiac analyzer mainly consists of an ADC for taking an electrocardiosignal (ECS) and an STM32L151xD microcontroller. To record operational data on current ECS, a block of non-volatile high-speed memory MRAM is connected to the microcontroller. A communication unit is based on the universal combo module SIM868 from SIMCOM, which supports data exchange in GSM/GPRS networks. The developed ECG monitoring system allows making decisions at different levels (cardiac analyzer, server, doctor), as well as exchanging information necessary to ensure an effective diagnostic and treatment process. We evaluated the performances of the developed system. The signal-to-noise ratio of the output signal is favorable, and all the features needed for a clinical evaluation (P waves, QRS complexes and T waves) are clearly readable.