Real Time Processing of ECG Signal on Mobile Embedded Monitoring Stations
Ondrej Krejcar
dept. of Measurement and Control
Centre for Applied Cybernetics
Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Ostrava, Czech Republic
ondrej.krejcar@remoteworld.net
Dalibor Janckulik, Leona Motalova, Karel Musil
dept. of Measurement and Control
Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Ostrava, Czech Republic
{Dalibor.Janckulik, Leona.Motalova,
Karel.Musil}@vsb.cz
Abstract— The paper presents a problem of Real Time
processing of ECG signal from patients by mobile embedded
monitoring stations. Two ECG measurement devices were used
in real tests. A two ECG channel bipolar ECG CorBelt and a
12 channels ECG device BlueECG. Both devices are products
from CorScience Company. Due to a problem of processing a
12 channels ECG from ECG device by Bluetooth to mobile
stations, the problem of packet parsing was discussed and two
possible solutions were focused on. Another important part in
biomedical data processing is visualization. A Windows
Presentation Foundation solution was presented and tested.
Mobile embedded monitoring stations are based on Microsoft
Windows Mobile operating system. The whole system is based
on the architecture of .NET Framework, .NET Compact
Framework, .NET Micro Framework and Microsoft SQL
Server. The project was successfully tested in real environment
in cryogenic room (-136
O
C).
Keywords-ECG; measurement; visualization; biotelemetry;
mobile
I. INTRODUCTION
Aim of the platform for patients’ bio-parameters
monitoring is to offer a solution providing services to help
and make full health care more efficient without limitations
for specific country. Physicians and other medical staff will
not be forced to make difficult and manual work including
unending paperwork, but they will be able to focus on the
patients and their problems. All data will be accessible
almost anytime anywhere through special applications
designated for portable devices web browser or desktop
clients and any changes will be made immediately at
disposal to medical staff based on the security clearance.
Physicians will have immediate access to the patient’s
newest results of accomplished examinations. In the case that
the ambulance have to go to some accident, rescue team can
due to portable devices send information about patient health
condition directly to hospital where responsible doctors and
staff will have information needed to execute immediate
operation without delaying by preparation of necessary
equipment.
All bio-signals data are stored and automatically
analyzed by neuronal network. System can evaluate presence
of critical values which could be the sign of worse medical
condition of a patient. In the moment of crossing the border
of monitored bio-signals values predefined by doctor, system
will inform responsible medical staff and provides all
information which could help to determine the cause and
seriousness of the problem.
Figure 1. Architecture of Guardian II platform.
The basic idea is to create a system that controls
important information about the state of a wheelchair-bound
person (monitoring of ECG and pulse in early phases, then
other optional values like temperature or oxidation of blood
etc.), his situation in time and place (GPS) and an axis tilt of
his body or wheelchair (2axis accelerometer). Values are
measured with the existing equipment, which communicates
with the module for processing via Bluetooth wireless
communication technology. Most of the data (according to
heftiness) is processed directly in PDA or Embedded
equipment to a form that is acceptable for simple
visualization.
Two variants are possible in case of embedded
equipment – with visualization and without visualization
(entity with/without LCD display). Data is continually sent
by GPRS or WiFi network to a server, where they are
processed and evaluated in detail. Processing and evaluating
2010 Second International Conference on Computer Engineering and Applications
978-0-7695-3982-9/10 $26.00 © 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCEA.2010.177
107