Bluetooth portable device and Matlab-based GUI for ECG signal acquisition and analisys

Various ECG instruments have addressed a wide variety of clinical and technical issues. However, there is still scope for improvement in them particularly in the area of their susceptibility to noise, lack of universal connectivity and off-line processing. In emergency situations, real-time health parameter is crucial. According to the American Heart Association [1], treatment of a patient experiencing ventricular fibrillation within the first 12 minutes of cardiac arrest brings a survival rate of 48%-75%. The survival rate drops to 2%-4% after 12 minutes have gone. This paper illustrates a low-cost method for realtime acquisition of ECG signal for storage and processing using a Matlab^®-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). This costly effective design can be interesting for the third world medical device industry to develop such device locally instead of buying the technology with high cost from the western countries. The ECG device is wirelessly connected to a smart phone or a computer using IEEE 802.15.1 based radio protocol. It includes an analog system and a Bluetooth transceiver, flexible and stretchable for comfortable continuous cardiac monitoring. The Matlab^®-based GUI is designed to perform real-time analysis on the ECG data to compute the different waves features and display the same on the GUI along with the ECG signal plot.