Department of Microelectronics, College of Physics and Information Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou City 350108, China.
Department of Information Systems and Computer Science, Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City 1108, Philippines.
Sensors (Basel). 2019 Nov 16;19(22):4996. doi: 10.3390/s19224996.
This study presents a low-power multi-lead wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) signal sensor system design that can simultaneously acquire the electrocardiograms from three leads, I, II, and V1. The sensor system includes two parts, an ECG test clothing with five electrode patches and an acquisition device. Compared with the traditional 12-lead wired ECG detection instrument, which limits patient mobility and needs medical staff assistance to acquire the ECG signal, the proposed vest-type ECG acquisition system is very comfortable and easy to use by patients themselves anytime and anywhere, especially for the elderly. The proposed study incorporates three methods to reduce the power consumption of the system by optimizing the micro control unit (MCU) working mode, adjusting the radio frequency (RF) parameters, and compressing the transmitted data. In addition, Huffman lossless coding is used to compress the transmitted data in order to increase the sampling rate of the acquisition system. It makes the whole system operate continuously for a long period of time and acquire abundant ECG information, which is helpful for clinical diagnosis. Finally, a series of tests were performed on the designed wearable ECG device. The results have demonstrated that the multi-lead wearable ECG device can collect, process, and transmit ECG data through Bluetooth technology. The ECG waveforms collected by the device are clear, complete, and can be displayed in real-time on a mobile phone. The sampling rate of the proposed wearable sensor system is 250 Hz per lead, which is dependent on the lossless compression scheme. The device achieves a compression ratio of 2.31. By implementing a low power design on the device, the resulting overall operational current of the device is reduced by 37.6% to 9.87 mA under a supply voltage of 2.1 V. The proposed vest-type multi-lead ECG acquisition device can be easily employed by medical staff for clinical diagnosis and is a suitable wearable device in monitoring and nursing the off-ward patients.
本研究提出了一种低功耗多导联可穿戴心电图（ECG）信号传感器系统设计，可同时采集三个导联（I、II 和 V1）的心电图。该传感器系统包括两部分，带有五个电极贴片的 ECG 测试服和采集设备。与传统的 12 导联有线 ECG 检测仪器相比，该仪器限制了患者的活动能力，需要医务人员协助获取 ECG 信号，而所提出的背心式 ECG 采集系统非常舒适，患者可以随时随地自行使用，特别是对于老年人。本研究提出了三种方法来降低系统功耗，包括优化微控制器（MCU）工作模式、调整射频（RF）参数和压缩传输数据。此外，还使用霍夫曼无损编码来压缩传输数据，以提高采集系统的采样率。这使得整个系统能够长时间连续运行，并获取丰富的 ECG 信息，有助于临床诊断。最后，对设计的可穿戴 ECG 设备进行了一系列测试。结果表明，多导联可穿戴 ECG 设备可以通过蓝牙技术采集、处理和传输 ECG 数据。设备采集的 ECG 波形清晰、完整，并可以实时显示在移动电话上。该可穿戴传感器系统的采样率为每导联 250Hz，这取决于无损压缩方案。该设备的压缩比为 2.31。通过在设备上实现低功耗设计，在 2.1V 的供电电压下，设备的整体工作电流降低了 37.6%至 9.87mA。所提出的背心式多导联 ECG 采集设备易于医护人员用于临床诊断，是监测和护理离院患者的合适可穿戴设备。
