ECG Signal Acquisition with on Chip Compression Algorithm

Abstract

In this paper ECG signal acquisition and compression of the ECG signal is presented. ECG is an electronic method of recording the heart beat of the patient. The characteristic of heart beat is determined by PQRST curve. The detection of QRS complexes in an ECG signal provides information about the heart rate. This paper includes all the details about how to get the proper ECG signal and how it can be compressed. The paper presents an Electrocardiographic (ECG) signal front-end amplifier or pre-amplification of ECG for further processing. The signal conditioning contains amplification and filtering. Compression is required for the fast transmission of ECG signal over wireless network and to reduce the amount of data storage in long-term ECG recording. A new algorithm named Partition Algorithm is proposed for ECG signal compression and reconstruction which involves the partitioning of input signal into eight digital threshold levels which are further reconstructed. Also, it is proved that eight threshold levels are sufficient for providing the necessary ECG information in digital format.