A simple FPGA system for ECG R-R interval detection

The analysis of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is used extensively in the diagnosis of different heart diseases. One of the major tasks to be provided is the accurate determination of the QRS complex. Due to its characteristic shape QRS detection in an ECG signal is necessary for efficient extraction of beat-to-beat intervals (RR). In this paper, a simple and reliable Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based ECG analysis system is discuss. An R peak detection system is modeled that identifies the time instances, at which the R peak occurred. The developed algorithm implements into a Field Programmable Gate Array for the ECG signals feature extraction. The proposed system is built using VHDL by Xilinx ISE 14.6 package. Simulation of the algorithm is performed using MATLAB Version 8.3.0.532 (R2014a) System Generator. Simulator was taking the MITBIH Arrhythmia ECG database as input.