Disgn and Implementation of An Embedded Romete EGC Measurement System

IMTC 2005 – Instrumentation and Measurement

Technology Conference

Ottawa, Canada 17-19 May 2005

Design and Implementation of an Embedded Remote ECG Measurement System Ying-Wen Bai, Chien-Yung Cheng, Chou-Lin Lu and Yung-Song Huang

Department of Electronic Engineering, Fu Jen Catholic University

Taipei, Taiwan, 242, R.O.C.

Email: bai@.tw

– Since an embedded circuit board is lower in cost, smaller in size, and lower in power consumption than a PC. In this paper, we use an integrated embedded circuit board instead of using a PC and interface circuit board with our system, which can provide the ECG measurement of a patient who is outside of a hospital. The collected medical information through computer networks will be stored in the medical information databases for accessing by the medical doctors, nurse, and other related health professionals. Our design integrates several modules such as, an embedded circuit board, a database, a Web server, wireless or Internet transmission, and remote user devices. Overall, our system can transmit the heart beat-rate, body temperature and electrocardiogram to the medical information database from a remote site.

Keywords: Medical Measurement System, ECG, Embedded Circuit Board, Web Server.

I.INTRODUCTION

Tradi ionally, he medical measuremen sys em can be expensive and a medical measurement system can be difficult t o access for a needed pat ient. Moreover such a syst em is neither compatible with the PC and communication standards nor is it easily upgraded. In addit ion, a special pat ient may need a medical measurement syst em t o monit or one’s body condit ion even if t hat individual is locat ed in t he hospit al. Based on t hese requirement s and available t echnology, our design provides a convenient operational procedure ut ilizing an embedded circui board and Web server o provide a remote electrocardiograph measurement.

Typically, an elect rocardiogram is generat ed by a nerve impulse st imulus t o a heart, whereby t he current is diffused around the surface of the body surface. The tiny current at the body surface will build on the tiny volt age drop, which is a couple of µV t o mV wit h an impulse variat ion. This very small amplitude of electrocardiograph, needs to be amplified a couple of housand imes for recording and displaying. Simultaneously, the amplified signal is then input ted int o an analog to digital conversion and through the digital interface inpu ed in o an embedded circui t board. The embedded circui t board uses clien t-server ne t work programming t o transmitting this digital medical signal to the remote database by wireless or wire networks.

Based on t he current soft ware and hardware t echnology, our design provides a convenient operat ional procedure t o conduc t a remo t e elec t rocardiograph measuremen t from outside of a hospital. All of the basic modules can be easily designed and implemented and t hey can be compatible with he current ly used syst ems. In 2003, people used a GSM module o ransmi his digi al medical da a [1], bu he Internet transmission has proved faster t han a GSM module. In our design, we used an embedded circuit board net work module t o t ransmit t ing t his digit al medical dat a. Moreover, due to the improvement of the current software and hardware technology of both computer systems and networks, a remote medical system needs to be redesigned by using more modern technologies, such as: a Web server, the Internet and wireless networks and an embedded circuit board. Hence, Our design includes several modules: an in t erface circui t board, an embedded circuit board, the software on the embedded circuit board for wireless or Internet transmission, and the software for he remo e medical servers. As he embedded circui board sof t ware is a module design using an ANSI C, therefore it is compatible with most current computer devices. Finally, our explana t ion emphasizes t he design of an embedded circui t board and t he remo t e server sof t ware module of an embedded remo t e elec t rocardiogram measurement system.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, a brief overview of a remote medical measurement system is provided. In Section 3, the hardware modules are discussed. In Section 4, the software modules are designed. In Section 5, t he implemen t a t ion and specifica t ion of t he design are provided. In the last Section, the conclusion is drawn.

II.A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF A REMOTE MEDICAL

MEASUREMENT SYSTEM

An elec rocardiogram is genera ed by a nerve impulse stimulus to a heart, whereby the current is diffused around the surface of the body surface. The current at t he body surface will build on the voltage drop, which is a couple of µV to mV with an impulse variation [2-3]. This very small amplitude of impulse needs t o be amplified t o enable t he recording and displaying. Usually, the electrocardiograph needs a couple of t housand t imes of amplificat ion. The funct ion blocks of t he int erface circuit s of a remot e elect rocardiogram syst em are used to amplify the tiny ECG signal with noise reduction. In our design, t he in t erface circui t is used t o pick up t he elec rocardiograph and amplify his signal by using noise suppression and elec t rici t y isola t ion. The amplified ECG signal is then inputted into an analog to digital converter and through the digital interface inputted into an embedded circuit

Abstract