Acquiring and analyzing electrocardiograms via smartphone to detect cardiovascular abnormalities

This paper presents a telemetry system to acquire the Electrocardiogram (ECG) waveform and analyze it using an algorithm developed to detect cardiac abnormalities in patients. The ECG data is sent in real-time to the patient's smartphone from a Bluetooth sensor. Two approaches are being developed to process the data. The Web server approach is to send the data from the phone to a Web server where the data will be analyzed and processed and the results will be sent back; this can be done through Wi-fi or a 3G connection. The Phone Processing approach is to run the algorithm within the application on the smartphone in which the data can be processed locally, and the results can be displayed in case of no network. The results will be stored on a Web server in both approaches for further clinical diagnosis. The necessary hardware to acquire the ECG and transmit it to the smartphone has been developed. Also, a robust diagnostic algorithm and an interactive smartphone application have been developed. On integration, the system will be capable of analyzing the ECG in real time and providing early warning of myocardial infarction (MI) to patients saving valuable time and effort in their treatment.