A new ECG-based Automated External Defibrillator system

Automated External Defibrillators (AED) are basic portable defibrillators that are designed for minimally-trained or untrained non-medical personnel. A microprocessor inside the defibrillation automatically analyzes the patient's heart rhythm and advises the operator whether a shock is needed. Audible and visual prompts will guide the user through the process. AED would advise a shock only to ventricular fibrillation. In this paper, we will present a framework of AED system. There are two crucial components should be elaborately designed, the hardware system and the algorithm of detecting ventricular fibrillation. In this paper, we will present the design of hardware system and a new algorithm which could discriminate ventricular fibrillation (VF) from other unshockable rhythm through the measurement of Sample Entropy (SampEn). We compared the sensitivity, specificity, positive prediction, accuracy of the new algorithm with several earlier VF detection algorithms. The experimental results prove that the new algorithm can be well suited for short data sequences analysis, and reaches an elegant balance between detection time and accuracy.