Design and tests of a smartphones-based multi-lead ECG monitoring system

With the rapid development of wireless communications and sensor technologies, multi-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring systems can be implemented for real-time Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) tracking and prevention services by using mobile terminals. To meet this objective, we designed a 7-lead ECG monitoring system enabled by smartphones, which is a combination of user mobility requirement and clinical intelligent function. In the system, an application-layer protocol is conceived and tested for guaranteeing data transmission reliability between smartphones and portable sensors. In addition, the smartphone in the system can be customized as a personal health manager, which can control system function modes and device states, and also perform information management and deeper data analysis. Most significantly, we developed a health risk alarm algorithm to detect ECG signal abnormities, which could help professionals pick out the data with key clinical information. To test our system performance and validity, we carried out simulation tests and system experiments. The results show our system is helpful in CVD prevention services.