Design of a Three-Lead Synthetic ECG Generator Using the Simplified McSharry's Model

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Recently, due to the dramatic improvement in computing capabilities and processing speed of microcontrollers and digital signal processors, many analytic algorithms for electrocardiograms (ECGs) have been developed and applied to a variety of portable electronic devices. In order to test whether the algorithms can analyze the various morphologies of electrocardiogram well, it is necessary to expend much effort collecting various ECG samples to establish an ECG database. Therefore, this paper simplifies and adopts a synthetic electrocardiogram model composed of three coupled differential equations proposed by Dr. McSharry et al. (2003), as well as utilizes an improved fourth-order Taylor series to quickly approximate the exponential function within the differential equation of a simplified synthetic ECG model so that, when studying ECG analytic algorithms, the graphical user interface (GUI) application “Synthetic Waveforms Control Panel,” developed by the author using LabVIEW, can be used to attain the desirable morphology of electrocardiogram as well as the time intervals between peaks (P, Q, R, S, T) and heart rate. The parameters of the adjusted synthetic ECG model are then sent to the memory of a synthetic ECG generator through a USB interface, and the ECG generator will generate three synthetic electrocardiograms of Einthoven's triangle for testing the electrocardiogram analytic algorithms.