Designing an embedded system for ECG signal preprocessing

Physiological parameters reflecting the people's health status are monitored and recorded in real time patient monitoring and intensive care processes. Among the devices in this context there are bed-side monitors and some other devices that are used for monitoring the signals related to the various body functions. Physiological signals obtained from the body by using the aforementioned devices are forwarded to the computer in which the decisions regarding treatment of health conditions are done by using various signal processing programs. For this, firstly the necessary pre-processing should be made on obtained analog signals and, converted digitized signals should be formed as the data packets before transmitting to the computer. An embedded system design was carried out in this study. The design puts together the pre-processings of analog ECG signals obtained by appropriate electrodes from the body and converting it to digital form to transmit to the computer via the USB port. Thus, with a variety of software to be carried out in a computer environment, an interface providing support to the development of general-purpose ECG recording system or other patient monitoring system has been created. In addition an application software was developed to monitor the real-time ECG signal recordings. Realized embedded system can handle the ECG signals from the patient in real time, be able packaging according to USART standards and pass to the computer via the USB port. Thanks to the designed system that allows the integration of additional communication modules performed instead of a USB communications using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi communication also offers the flexibility to transfer data to mobile devices. By this way, the realized system can also be adapted to modern wearable sensor networks. Thus, in addition to being used for stationary applications in home health care applications, the system can be adapted to mobile devices enabling users to use even while continuing their daily activities.