Heart arrhythmia detection

Cardiac arrhythmias continue to be one of the leading causes of cardiovascular disease (CD) for men and women in the US. [1] Diagnosis and treatment of these conditions are usually achieved using electrocardiogram (ECG) devices such as Holter monitors, loop recorders and implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) among others. In this document, we report the development of a simple, single-lead, real-time ECG device intended for the monitor and detection of ventricular tachycardia (VT). Control software was developed using LabVIEW´s Biomedical toolkit and validated using simulated ECG signals. Simulation analysis provides a sensitivity and specificity of 97.6 % and 98.0 % respectively. Based on these results, this device shows promise to be utilized as an ICD assistant as well as implemented in hand-held devices for ambulatory VT monitoring. Future work will refine the algorithm to validate its accuracy using ECG records from the MIT-BIH database.