Development of low cost wireless ECG data acquisition system

Cardiac malfunctioning is the leading cause of mortality today. Electrocardiogram (ECG) plays a vital role for diagnosis of cardiac disease. The frequency information from the ECG signal is highly useful in clinical applications such as sudden cardiac arrest prediction, cardiovascular disease detection etc. This paper presents the development of a low cost, wireless ECG data acquisition system for clinical purpose and analysis. In this system, Arduino Uno is used and the ECG signal is transferred to the laptop by Bluetooth serial communication. By using a Bluetooth dongle, this system can be used in desktop computer. An application is developed by processing, which visualizes and stores the ECG signal in real time. This application is built for making this system usable for clinical purpose. This application stores the ECG signal in text file, which can be used in MATLAB for analysis. This system can be used in Windows, Linux, or Mac OS. This system is portable, battery powered and it is capable of acquiring up to 22 hours of continuous electrocardiogram data.