ECG ACQUISITION UNIT

SEMINAR REPORT
submitted in partial fulllment of the requirements for the award of the
degree of
Bachelor of Technology
in
ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
of
MAHATMA GANDHI UNIVERSITY
by
TESS THOMAS(201061)
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology
Rajagiri Valley, Kakkanad, Kochi, 682039
2012
Rajagiri Valley, Cochin - 682 039
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
CERTIFICATE
Certied that this document titled ECG ACQUISITION UNIT is a bonade report of
the seminar presented by TESS THOMAS (201061) of seventh semester Electronics and
Communication Engineering in partial fulllment of the requirements for the award of degree of
Bachelor of Technology in Electronics and Communication Engineering of the Mahatma Gandhi
University, Kottayam, during the academic year 2012-2013.
Seminar Guide Head of Department
Ms.Tressa Michael Mr.Jaison Jacob
Place: Kakkanad
Date:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I bring out the report of my seminar work endeavoring my biggest gratitude to GOD almighty.
I would like to extent my sincere gratitude to Prof. Jaison Jacob, Head of the Department of
Electronics and Communication, for equipping me with all facilities during the development of
my report.
I make use of this opportunity to express my heartily gratitude to my project co-coordinators
Mr.Jobin K Anthony, Associate Professor in Electronics and Communication Department and
Mr. Rama Varma, Asst. Professor in, Electronics and Communication Department, without
whose help I would have been far from completion of this prototype and assisting me in times
of needs and also to my project guide Ms.Tressa Michael, Asst. Professor in Electronics and
Communication department, for giving me relevant ideas and advises for making my project a
grand success. I am also thankful to the Lab Assistants, the Library stas and all the members
of the faculty of the college for their whole hearted support and guidance.
This acknowledgement will not stand if my friends and classmates are not thanked whose
constant encouragement and timely criticism helped me a great extend and fueled my determi-
nation. I take this opportunity to thank all who have helped me directly or indirectly through
this endeavour.
ABSTRACT
The monitoring of vital physiological signals has proven to be one of the most ecient ways
for continuous and remote tracking of the health status of patients. Electrocardiogram monitors
are often used in many medical service centers and hospitals to diagnose and monitor a persons
health status by measuring their cardiac activity. An ECG signal, which can be utilized to
evaluate the hearts electrical activity, measure the rate and regularity of heartbeats, the position
of the chambers, identify any damage to the heart and investigate the eect of drugs and
devices used to regulate the heart. This procedure is very useful for monitoring people with (or
susceptible to) impairments in their cardiac activity.
This report presents a development platform of an ECG acquisition unit, capable of capturing
cardiac data in digital format and transmitting ECG signals via any wireless technology to a
PC or set-top box.
This development will make ECG data more: prolic, easy to obtain, and eective. It can be
used to provide heart patients with home based monitoring facility or it can be used in hospital
premises to eciently monitor ECG without compromising patient mobility due to wires etc.
Also, it can be used to centrally monitor the data in a nursing room type of facility instead of
visiting each room and checking the respective monitors.
List of Figures
2.1 Block Diagram Of ECG Acquisition Unit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Hardware Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 Electrical Impulse Of The Heart. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1 Recessed Electrode Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2 Right Leg Driver Topology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1 Shematic Diagram Of An Instrumentation Ampliers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2 60 Hz Notch Filter Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1 ADC Result Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2 External Data Memory Interface (16Mbytes Address Space) . . . . . . . . . . . 14
iii
Contents
Acknowledgements i
Abstract ii
List of Figures iii
1 Introduction 1
2 Design Of ECG Acquisition Unit 2
2.1 Basic Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Basic Block Diagram Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.3 Hardware Block Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.4 Factors In The Design Of ECG Acquisition Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3 ECG Signal Source 4
3.1 ECG Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4 Sensor Design Considerations 6
4.1 Electrodes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2 Noise Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2.1 AC mains inteferance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2.2 Biological Noise Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3 Noise Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3.1 Signal Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3.2 ECG Right Leg Driver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3.3 Twisted Pair Cables And Shielded Cables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5 Signal Acquisition Hardware Design 9
5.1 Electrodes And Electrode Placement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2 Instrumentation Amplier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3 Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3.1 Low Pass Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3.2 Notch lter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6 Digitisation 13
6.1 Data Buering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7 Conclusion 16
iv
8 Future Considerations 17
8.1 ECG Signal Acquisition from Individually Measured Electrode Potentials . 17
8.2 Signal Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
References 18
Chapter 1
Introduction
An ECG is a measurement of the electrical activity of the heart (cardiac) muscle as
obtained from the surface of the skin. As the heart performs its function of pumping
blood through the circulatory system, a result of the action potentials responsible for the
mechanical events within the heart is a certain sequence of electrical events. It measures
the rate and reguarity of heart beat. ECG acquisition unit is a mobile hardware device
attached to the patient whose purpose is to collect the ECG signal from the patient
and send it to central unit wirelessly. This provide heart patients with home based
monitoring facility or it can be used in hospital premises to eciently monitor ECG
without compromising patient mobility due to wires etc. Also, it can be used to centrally
monitor the data in a nursing room type of facility instead of visiting each room and
checking the respective monitors.
1
Chapter 2
Design Of ECG Acquisition Unit
2.1 Basic Block Diagram
Figure 2.1: Block Diagram Of ECG Acquisition Unit.
2.2 Basic Block Diagram Description
An ECG signal is a quasi-periodical rhythmically repeating signal which intreprets
the electrical activity of the heart.these signals are extracted out from the body using
silver-silver chloride electrodes.The ecg signal is picked from the surface of skin(where
the electrodes are placed)via the electrode gel and sensor.The signal obtained from the
electrodes is very small in magnitude(mv)so it is passed to a amplication unit where
the ampliers boost the level of the input signal th match the requirements of the record-
ing/display system or to match the range of the analog to digital convertor, thus increasing
the sensitivity and resolution of the measurement.
The amplied signals are passed to the ltering unit. A lter is a circuit which amplies
some of the frequencies applied to its input and attenuates others. Additionally lters are
used to reject the unwamted noise within a certain frequency range.
The nal stage is the analog to digital conversion and buering stage.In this the analog
signals(ECG)are converted to digital format using microcontroller which has in built ana-
log to digital converter. The transmission of data on wireless IP network has many latency
issues. Many samples are lost while packets are being transmitted on network.this results
2
in severe distortion when recreating the orginal signal.So data buering is used inorder to
prevent the loss of data while transmitting. Microcontoller does the data buferring also.
Now the ECG signal from the body is ready to be transmitted wirelessly to a central
unit.
2.3 Hardware Block Diagram
Figure 2.2: Hardware Block Diagram
2.4 Factors In The Design Of ECG Acquisition Unit
The major factor taken into consideration when designing the ECG acquisition system
is the nature of the ECG signals itself. The useful bandwidth is described as ranging
from 0.5 Hz to 35 Hz for monitoring applications and between 0.05 Hz and 150 Hz for
diagnosis applications. The ECG signal is extremely weak (up to 2 mV) combined with
a variable electrode-skin contact potential in the order of a few hundred millivolts (cause
of baseline wander), and a common-mode DC component of up to 1 V. On top of this
the signal contains noise from power line interference, muscle movement and respiration.
Because this system is targeted at monitoring rather than clinical analysis of the ECG,
the 0.535 Hz useful bandwidth was considered. For such monitoring systems a single lead
monitoring is sucient.
3
Chapter 3
ECG Signal Source
In the resting state, cardiac muscle cells are polarized, with the inside of cell negatively
charged with respect to its surroundings. The charge is created by dierent concentrations
of ions such as potassium and sodium on either side of the cell membrane. In response
to certain stimuli, movement of these ions occurs, particularly a rapid inward movement
of sodium. In this process of depolarization, rapid loss of internal negative potential
results in an electrical signal. The mechanism of cell depolarization and repolarization
is used by nerve cells to carry impulses and by muscle cells for triggering mechanical
contractions. This results in generation of an electrical impulse which can be acquired by
putting electrodes on specic points of the body.
Figure 3.1: Electrical Impulse Of The Heart.
Stage 0 = depolarization, opening of voltage gated sodium channels
Stage 1 = initial rapid repolarization, closure of sodium channels and chloride inux
Stage 2 = plateau opening of voltage gated calcium channels
Stage 3 = repolarization, potassium eux
Stage 4 = diastolic pre potential drift.
Figure 3-1, shows the potential signals and the stages. This does not look like the
signal from an ECG sensor. The reason is that the electrical signal will spread to dierent
parts of the body in dierent ways. This is why the number of leads on an ECG sensor
is important. Dierent forms of disease can be diagnosed from dierent leads. The most
4
common lead is lead II, which is the lead implemented in this sensor. Lead II is dened
as the lead between the right and left arms.
The standard for diagnostic ECG is twelve leads, however for portable systems, one
EKG lead (usually lead II) can be used. Lead II can diagnose the more common diseases
like arrhythmias.
3.1 ECG Measurement
The electrical impulses within the heart act as a source of voltage, which generates
a current ow in the torso and corresponding potentials on the skin. The potential
distribution can be modeled as if the heart were a time-varying electric dipole. If two
leads are connected between two points on the body (forming a vector between them),
electrical voltage observed between the two electrodes is given by the dot product of the
two vectors. Thus, to get a complete picture of the cardiac vector, multiple reference
lead points and simultaneous measurements are required. An accurate indication of the
frontal projection of the cardiac vector can be provided by three electrodes, one connected
at each of the three vertices of the Einthoven triangle. The 60 degree projection concept
allows the connection points of the three electrodes to be the limbs.
5
Chapter 4
Sensor Design Considerations
The front end of an ECG sensor must be able to deal with the extremely weak nature
of the signal it is measuring. Even the strongest EcG signal has a magnitude of less
than 10mV, and furthermore the ECG signals have very low drive (very high output
impedance). The requirements for a typical ECG sensor are as follows:
Capability to sense low amplitude signals in the range of 0.05-10mV.
Very high input impedance, greater than 5 Mega-ohms.
Very low input leakage current, less than 1 micro-Amp.
Flat frequency response of 0.05-150 Hz.
High Common Mode Rejection Ratio(CMRR).
4.1 Electrodes
Electrodes are used for sensing bio-electric potentials as caused by muscle and nerve
cells. ECG electrodes are generally of the direct-contact type. They work as transducers
converting ionic ow from the body through an electrolyte into electron current and
consequentially an electric potential able to be measured by the front end of the ECG
system. These transducers, known as bare- metal or recessed electrodes, generally consist
of a metal such as silver or stainless steel, with a jelly electrolyte that contains chloride
and other ions.
Figure 4.1: Recessed Electrode Structure.
6
On the skin side of the electrode interface, conduction is from the drift of ions as the
ECG waveform spreads throughout the body. On the metal side of the electrode, conduc-
tion results from metal ions dissolving or solidifying to maintain a chemical equilibrium
using this or a similar chemical reaction:
Ag Ag + +e
The result is a voltage drop across the electrode-electrolyte interface that varies de-
pending on the electrical activity on the skin. The voltage between two electrodes is then
the dierence in the two half-cell potentials.
4.2 Noise Sources
There are four principal noise pick up or coupling mechanisms for noise conductive, ca-
pacitive, inductive, and radiative.
4.2.1 AC mains inteferance
The 60 Hz mains power-line frequency and its components are the most common source
of interference in a biomedical signal. AC interference is coupled into the system from
power-line and devices using AC power such as lamps. The coupling mechanism can be
either capacitive or magnetic, but the capacitive mechanism is the more prevalent. The
60 Hz noise is common to all points on the patient, but the 60 Hz noise is additive to the
ECG signal and is in the order of tens of volts.
4.2.2 Biological Noise Sources
When an electrode comes in contact with skin, a potential dierence up to 300mV appears
known as baseline wander. This can be made worse by poor connection of electrodes,
perspiration or the movement of electrodes due to respiration. Any movement that cause
muscle utilization generates noise that interferes with ECG signal. This is specially the
case when limb leads are used. The best ECG signal is obtained when the patient is
at rest and relaxed. Also, skin preparation to remove any non-conductive substance is
important in obtaining a strong ECG signal.
4.3 Noise Reduction
4.3.1 Signal Filtering
The presence of noise gives rise to the need to signal ltering. Noise can be removed
through the use of analogue circuitry or digital signal processing. Due to the weak nature
of ECG signal and the noise aecting it requires that a range of lters be implemented.
4.3.2 ECG Right Leg Driver
ECG right leg driver is implemented to eliminate the common mode noise generated from
the body. The system is shown in gure 4.2. The two signals entering the dierential
amplier are summed, inverted and amplied in the right leg driver before being fed back
to an electrode attached to the right leg. The other electrodes pick up this signal and
hence the noise is cancelled.
7
Figure 4.2: Right Leg Driver Topology.
4.3.3 Twisted Pair Cables And Shielded Cables
Use of twisted pair or shielded cable is recommended in obtaining a noise free signal.
Due to the geometry of twisted pair wires and electromagnetism, the noise signals are
induced with equal magnitudes, but in opposite polarity. This causes a cancellation of
the noise signals.
Also, the introduction of shield or ground braid in the cable can be used to isolate the
cable signal leads from radio frequency interference and electromagnetic interference.
8
Chapter 5
Signal Acquisition Hardware Design
The circuitry able to obtain an ECG signal in a largely traditional manner was built. The
block diagram depicting each stage of the signal acquisition hardware can be found in
Block 2.
5.1 Electrodes And Electrode Placement
Disposable self-adhesive electrodes were used in the experiments. Also, AgCl conducting
gel was used for stronger signal capture. As a general principle, the closer the electrodes
are to the heart, the stronger the signal that will be obtained. In our lead II formation,
electrodes were placed on the right arm and left leg with right leg acting as the ground
for the body.
5.2 Instrumentation Amplier
The dierential amplier is well suited for most of the applications in biomedical mea-
surements. However, it has the following limitations:
The amplier has a limited impedance and therefore, draws some current from the
signal source and loads them to some extent.
The CMRR of the amplier may not exceed 60 dB in most of the cases, which is
usually inadequate in modern biomedical instrumentation systems.
The limitations have been overcome with the availability of an improved version of the
dierential amplier, which is the instrumentation amplier.An instrumentation ampli-
er is a precision dierential voltage gain device that is optimized for operation in an
environment hostile to precision measurement. It basically consists of three op-amps and
seven resistors. Basically connecting a buered amplier to a basic dierential amplier
makes an instrumentation amplier.
The instrumentation amplier oers the following advantages for its applications in
the biomedical eld.
Extremely high nput impedance.
Low bias and oset currents.
Less performance deterioration if source impedance changes.
9
Possibility of independent reference levels for source and amplier.
Very high CMRR.
High slew rate.
Low power consumption.
Good quality instrumentation ampliers have become available in single IC form such as
ICL7605, LH0036, etc.
Figure 5.1: Shematic Diagram Of An Instrumentation Ampliers
5.3 Filter
A lter is a circuit which amplies some of the frequencies applied to its input and
attenuate others.there are four common types:high-pass,which only amplies frequencies
above a certain value; low pass, which only amplies frequencies below a certain value;
band pass which only amplies frequencies within a certain band; and band stop,which
amplies all frequencies except those in a certain band.
Filters may be designed using many dierent methods. These include passive lters
which use only passive components, such as resistors, capacitors and inductors. Active
lters use ampliers in addition to passive components in order to obtain better perfor-
mance, which is dicult with passive lters.Operational ampliers are frequently used as
gain blocks in active lters. Digital lters use ADC to convert a signal to digital form
and then use high-speed digital computing techniques for ltering.
5.3.1 Low Pass Filter
First stage in the ltering unit is a low-pass lter designed at the cut-o frequency of
150Hz. The low-pass lter was implemented as cascaded RC, or passive lters. At high
frequencies, the opamp, whose output is limited to its slew rate or maximum frequency of
output, may not be able to cope with the high frequency of the signal. For this reason it
was chosen to implement this lter as cascaded RC lters, before isolating the lter from
the rest of the circuit by a voltage follower. The cut-o frequency is calculated by the
equation,
10
f
c
=
1
2RC
(1)
At the cut-o frequency of the rst lter, the attenuation will be 20dB/decade (f
c
10). At
the cut-o frequency of the second lter, the attenuation will be 40dB/decade thereafter.
If the two cut-o frequencies are equal, then the slope will be 40dB/decade from the
common cut-o frequency.The second stage of the amplier presents a load to the rst
stage, for this reason the second stages impedance should be higher than that of the rst
stage.low pass lter ussed is of non-inverting and has a gain of unity.
5.3.2 Notch lter
Notch lters, also commonly referred to as band stop or band rejection lter. They
are designed to transmit most wavelenghts with little intensity loss while attenuating a
specic frequency range. They are basically the inverse of band pass lters.notch lters
can be easily made with a slight variation on all pass lter, the pole and zero have
equal(logarithmic) relative distances from the unit circle. All we need to do is put the
zero closer to the circle. Then the frequency at which zero is located is exactly cancel
from the spectrum og input data. Most common example of a notch lter is 60-Hz noise
from power lines.
Notch lters are band stop lters with high Q factor. The twin T notch lter using
opamps is a simple circuit that can provide good level of rejection at notch frequency.
At f = fNOTCH, the output goes to zero. Figure shows the response plot for the circuit
shown above where fo = 60 Hz and Q = 6.
Figure 5.2: 60 Hz Notch Filter Response
The notch frequency for the notch lter is set by the following calculations:
f =
ALP
AHP

RZ2
RZ1
fo (2)
ALP = Low pass output
AHP = High pass output
11
Typically, ALP / AHP = 1 and RZ2 / RZ1 = 1 which means f = fo. Notch lter plays
an important role in getting rid of the AC mains signal interference through the human
body. If successfully implemented, it will pass clean ECG signal at its output.
12
Chapter 6
Digitisation
The recent progress of digital technology in terms of both hardware and software makes
more ecient and exible digital data rather than analog processing. Digital techniques
have several advantages.Their performance is not aected by unpredictable variable such
as componenet aging and temperature which can degrade the performance of analog
devices. Moreover, design parameters can be more easily changed because they involve
software other than hardware modication. The ADC requires the signal for sampling to
be contained completely in the positive voltage domain.in order to make it completely in
the positive domain summing amplier is used before digitization.
Microcontroller which as inbuilt ADC is used to manage the digitization of the ECG
signal and subsquently store it in readiness for transmission. Generally most of the micro-
controllers has built in 12-bit ADC which is used for digitization. The ADC has 8 channels
and is congurable via 3-register (ADCCON1, ADCCON2 and ADCCON3) Special Func-
tion Register (SFR) interface. The analog input voltage range is from 0V to VREF which
is set to be 9V in the prototype system. Once congured through ADCCON1-3 SFRs,
the ADC will convert analog input and provide a 12-bit result into ADCDATAH/L SFRs.
The format of the result bits is shown in gure 6.1.
Figure 6.1: ADC Result Format
Due to latency issues involved in wireless transmission on IP network (using 802.11b),
the sampling rate has to be fairly low when compared to clinical system, which samples
at 1 kHz. In a telemetry system, the sampling frequency is typically much lower with the
sampling frequency of 400Hz implemented in this system acceptable. This is more than
13
the Nyquists criteria for sampling rate. The data resolution has not been compromised
so as to create an accurate signal out of the sampled data.
6.1 Data Buering
The transmission of data on the wireless IP network has many latency issues. Therefore,
many samples are lost while the packets are being transmitted on the network. This results
in severe distortion when recreating the original signal. It becomes very critical to design
the system in a way that samples are not lost while the data is being transmitted on the
network. Thus, a data buering strategy was designed to overcome this limitation.
A buer space was introduced in the system to hold data for 5 seconds (at least in order
to show sucient sections of the waveform for analysis). The ADC results are stored
in the buer locations using pointer arithmetic. Once the buer is full, it is ready for
transmission. A signal is sent to the transmission module to start transmission. To avoid
over-writing the buered data, the ADC is halted while the transmission takes place of
the 5 second buered data. Once the transmission is complete, the ADC starts conversion
again and this process continues as long as the system stays powered on. The digitization
of the analog inp ut takes place at a rate of 400samples/sec. Each sample is 12-bit
which takes 2 bytes of space for storage. It has 4kB of EEPROM space for data storage
which is built on-chip. The tests for storage of data on this space didnt produce accurate
results due to slow access speed of the ROM (380?s for writing 4 bytes as a page). Many
samples were lost and accurate signal could not be reproduced. The ADuC831 provides
for external memory interfacing up to 16MB. A high-speed nonvolatile SRAM was tested.
The results produced by external RAM interfacing were much better and accurate than
the EEPROM. Therefore, it was decided to use the external RAM instead of the internal
EEPROM.
Figure 6.2: External Data Memory Interface (16Mbytes Address Space)
The Port 0 (P0) acts the multiplexed address/data bus. It emits the low byte of the
14
data pointer (DPL) as an address, which is latched by a pulse of ALE prior to data being
placed on the bus by the ADUC831 (write operation) or the SRAM (read operation).
Port 2 (P2) provides the data pointer page byte (DPP) to be latched by ALE, followed
by the data pointer high byte (DPH). If no latch is connected to P2, DPP is ignored
by the SRAM and the 8051 standard of the 64kBytes external data memory access is
maintained.
15
Chapter 7
Conclusion
This report presents a development platform of an ECG acquisition unit, capable of
capturing cardiac data in digital format and transmitting ECG signals via any wireless
technology to a PC or set-top box. The monitoring of vital physiological signals has proven
to be one of the most ecient ways for continuous and remote tracking of the health status
of patients. Electrocardiogram monitors are often used in many medical service centers
and hospitals to diagnose and monitor a persons health status by measuring their cardiac
activity. An ECG signal, which can be utilized to evaluate the hearts electrical activity,
measure the rate and regularity of heartbeats, the position of the chambers, identify any
damage to the heart and investigate the eect of drugs and devices used to regulate
the heart. This procedure is very useful for monitoring people with (or susceptible to)
impairments in their cardiac activity.
This development will make ECG data more: prolic, easy to obtain, and eective.
It can be used to provide heart patients with home based monitoring facility or it can
be used in hospital premises to eciently monitor EKG without compromising patient
mobility due to wires etc. Also, it can be used to centrally monitor the data in a nursing
room type of facility instead of visiting each room and checking the respective monitors.
An ECG signal is a quasi-periodical rhythmically repeating signal which intreprets
the electrical activity of the heart. These signals are extracted out from the body using
silver-silver chloride electrodes. The signal obtained from the electrodes is very small in
magnitude(mv)so it is passed to a amplication unit where the ampliers boost the level
of the input signal to match the requirements of the recording/display system or to match
the range of the analog to digital convertor, thus increasing the sensitivity and resolution
of the measurement.
The amplied signals are passed to the ltering unit. A lter is a circuit which amplies
some of the frequencies applied to its input and attenuates others.additionally lters are
used to reject the unwamted noise within a certain frequency range.
and nally using a ADC the signals are converted to digital format and is ready for
the wireless transmission. The ECG acquisition unit thus acts as a bridge between the
sensor which is used to extract signals from body and wireless transmission. only if the
acquisition unit is included the signals recieved at the recieving end will be exact as the
ECG signal from the body.
16
Chapter 8
Future Considerations
It is evident that a lot of work and improvements in all facets of the system are required
before the ultimate goal of a miniature completely wireless ECG system can be reached.
Some of the more important improvements are discussed here.
8.1 ECG Signal Acquisition from Individually Measured Electrode Poten-
tials
The instrumentation amplier has very high CMRR. The noise that is common to both
electrodes attached to the body has much greater amplitude as compared to the actual
ECG signal. It is the instrumentation amplier that rejects the common noise having high
CMRR and only amplies the actual ECG signal. If the ECG signal becomes common to
both electrodes, it is also rejected due to the high CMRR of the instrumentation amplier,
thus, resulting in either no or a very weak output of the instrumentation amplier. It
is recommended that an investigation into what type of material there is that can form
and equivalent electrode that is unable to pick the ECG but is able to pick up the noise
coupled to the body be conducted. This will make noise common to both electrodes while
the ECG will be conducted by only one of them.
8.2 Signal Compression
It is recommended to use signal compression once the EKG signal is digitized. This
will reduce the memory footprint of the stored ECG data and also reduce the network
trac while transmission. However, special algorithms should be used in order to avoid
any loss of resolution while compressing and decompressing.
17
References
[1] R S KHANDPUR Biomedical Instrumentation.
[2] Dale Dubin, M.D.Rapid Interpretation of EKGs.
[3] Chou Electrocardiography in Clinical Practice Adult and Pediatric.
[4] Bronzia,Joseph D,IEEEE Press,20000 The Biomedical Engineering Handbook.
[5] Ovidiu Apostu,Bogdan Hagiu,Member IEEE Wireless ECG Monitoring.
18