Desenvolvimento de um dispositivo detector de arritmias cardíacas

Abstract

Cardiac arrhythmias are important indications of heart disease in patients with symptoms of cardiac problems, and if properly detected, it allows the reduction of morbidity and mortality by conducting appropriate therapeutic procedures before the occurrence of an event of greater risk to the patient. This work proposes the creation of a low-cost device capable of monitoring the electrocardiographic signal (ECG) of a patient in search of possible arrhythmias. For this, the device registers, in non-volatile memory for a period of 24 h, the ECG traces that present abnormalities, allowing a cardiologist to later analyze the events recorded in search of a possible heart disease. The designed device consists of a low-cost development board, known as the Blue Pill, with an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller equipped with a 12-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) for the acquisition of the ECG signal, and an adapter for SD memory card to be used as a storage medium for anomalous ECG data. To test the prototype, an ECG simulator connected to the ADC input was used, thus avoiding the need for tests on humans. Arrhythmias are detected by monitoring the main morphological components of the ECG signal, individually for each heartbeat, and comparing them with limit values considered normal, with anomalous events recorded on the SD card. The results obtained showed promise in the monitoring of cardiac arrhythmias, the components of the signal were detected as expected and the written signal has some visible alterations. Those results allow the project to help medical professionals in the field of cardiology to study and detect cardiac diseases.