Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Objectives: The present study was to develop and design a simple and low cost ECG setup for patient care. The device is a low cost and simple approach for acquiring ECG data. The present study mainly focuses on reliability and consistency for acquiring the ECG data. It should be simple to use, portable and low cost to implement. Methods: The following study was conducted between two groups of subjects; each group contains n=40 subjects. First the subjects were recruited to the department of physiology autonomic function laboratory and the demographic and anthropometric data was acquired. The subjects were allowed to rest for some time. Single lead ECG was obtained using AD8232 custom designed module and was connected to a laptop as signal was captured by audacity software and compared against a medical grade ECG monitor and the results were analyzed. Findings: From our study it is clearly evident that there is a strong positive correlation of ECG data obtained between AD8232 and standard clinically approved ECG monitor r=0.9 (p 0.001). Now it is clearly evident that we can use AD8232 module instead of standard ECG device for basic monitoring. Novelty: The new device developed successfully captured single lead ECG which is a low cost implementation around |2350 (table given in annexure). Capturing ECG with microphone input is quite new way of acquiring ECG signals. The new device was easy to set up, no special software is needed to acquire the signal runs on USB voltage which is 5v. The device is simple to use, open source hardware and consistent with the recordings when compared with the standard ECG monitor. The latest device can be configured in many ways for future applications using open source sound capturing software. Audacity open source software.

Keywords: Portable ECG; single lead; USB; open source; AC; DC; AD8232; GPL