Design and optimization of an ECG / holter hybrid system for mobile systems based on DSPic

This paper presents the architecture of a portable system enabling the acquisition, processing, storage, and transmission in real-time, both as a 12-lead standard ECG and as long-term Holter. The prototype has been designed using a DSPic 33FJ256GP710 module, which allows an efficient local signal processing, potentially including morphological analysis and compression techniques. Our ECG data acquisition uses the new integrated circuit ADS1198 (low-power, 8-channel, 16-bit analog front-end for biopotential measurements), and is designed for memory management and local storage. The system is connected to a Smartphone through a Bluetooth module, which, on the one hand, allows to display and store the ECG signal in the Smartphone, and on the other hand, also displays and transmits he ECG signal for remote diagnosis and patient history storage. The preliminary analysis of the system was carried out with data taken from the Physionet dataset, in order to test its performance, in three different modalities. First, in the local mode, a recording time of over 120 hours has been achieved. Second, in the cellular mode, up to10 days of data could be stored in the phone. And third, in the remote server mode, practically unlimited time can be stored. For remote signal visualization, the average delay of the packets was less than 1.73ms, with a mean power consumption of 0.48 w/h, using a battery of 2 A/h (similar to a cellular phone one).