A smartphone-only solution for detecting indications of acute myocardial infarction

In this paper we consider the detection of indications of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) through a smartphone only solution. AMI is a serious heart condition where a blood vessel of the heart is fully or partially blocked e.g. by a rupture of an atherosclerotic plaque, the arrival of oxygen to the heart muscle is disturbed, and part of the heart muscle tissue dies (irreversible injury) due to insufficient oxygen supply. When a person feels obscure acute chest pain (angina pectoris), it may be caused, for instance, by heartburn or it may be a symptom of AMI. The goal of this paper is to develop a solution, which could either be integrated into an emergency App for the use of telemedicine by trained medical personnel or as a standalone solution to smartphone users in order to help recognizing this life-threatening condition earlier. The developed solution extracts the heart signal of a patient who lies in supine position by utilizing the built-in accelerometer and gyroscope within a smart device (e.g. a smartphone), which is placed on the chest of the patient. The solution does not require any external sensors for the smartphone to operate, but in the future it could be supplemented with ECG, for instance, to improve its performance. We have collected data with smartphone running Google Android from 17 AMI patients before and after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and in addition, control recordings were performed in 23 healthy individuals (CG) and in 12 patients with stable coronary artery disease (CAD) before elective PCI.