Preliminary Level Cardiac Abnormality Detection Using Wireless Telecardiology System

Abstract

This paper describes a portable diagnostic telecardiology system, aimed to benefit the rural people of a third world country like India. The designed system consists of two major blocks; the first one is required to be carried to the patient home, named 'Portable Telecardiology Kit'. The second one, named 'Automated Cardiac Signal Processor', a PC based system, to be permanently placed at the nearest rural health care center. The 'Portable Telecardiology Kit' contains a portable ECG machine, a dedicated microcontroller-based full duplex communication system, both interfaced, in a single enclosure. This kit will convert the ECG signal along with a tag page (containing different information regarding patient's health and history of illness) to a digitized serial electromagnetic wave. The signal may be transmitted over a distance of about 7-10 km through a cordless phone under full duplex mode. The PC-based system, after receiving the transmitted signal from patient site, extract the ECG signal after proper filtering, and then pass the signal through an in-built knowledge-base. Finally, a rule-based rough set decision system is generated for the development of an inference engine for disease identification from these time-plane features. The system will generate a report indicating the preliminary level abnormalities, and the precautions that can be adopted at an early stage. The entire report is then sent to the Portable kit at the patient bed-site.