On-line monitoring of the heart rate variability spectral parameters of patients after myocardial infarction in intensive coronary unit

A system for the on-line monitoring in the intensive coronary unit of the heart rate variability (HRV) spectral parameters (very low, low and high frequency powers) is proposed. The system is based on a pentium PC at 133 MHz with a TMS 320C30 floating point digital signal processor (DSP) card. The ECG signal is pre-processed on the DSP and the RR intervals are obtained and transferred to the host. Based on a new approach to the Prony's spectral method, the power spectrum density of each incoming data segment of one minute length is hence obtained. A graphical user interface allows even the inexperienced computer user to interact with the analysis program and to follow the dynamics of the spectral parameters.