A microcontroller based system for real-time heart rate estimation from ECG signal

This paper illustrates an algorithm for real time detection QRS complex from ECG signal for computation of heart rate. The algorithm is implemented on a standalone embedded system based on Atmel 89C51 microcontroller. Synthetic ECG is generated using Physionet data through the parallel port (LPT1) of a personal computer and delivered to the embedded system. During an initial training period of first 1500 samples, some amplitude and slope based signatures are learned to form a rule base, which are used for detecting the subsequent QRS regions accurately. An average sensitivity of 97.82% and predictivity of 98.35% respectively are obtained from MIT BIH arrhythmia data. From the detected successive R peak locations heart rate has been computed.