Title: Real-time detection of electrocardiogram wave features using template matching and implementation in FPGA

Authors: H.K. Chatterjee; M. Mitra; R. Gupta

Addresses: ECE Department, Camellia School of Engineering and Technology, Nadibhag, P.O. Kazipara, Barasat, Kolkata 700124, West Bengal, India ' Instrumentation Engineering Section, Department of Applied Physics, University of Calcutta, 92, APC Road, Kolkata 700009, West Bengal, India ' Instrumentation Engineering Section, Department of Applied Physics, University of Calcutta, 92, APC Road, Kolkata 700009, West Bengal, India

Abstract: Electrocardiogram (ECG) can provide valuable clinical information on cardiac functions. This paper illustrates an algorithm for real-time detection of wave peaks and their features from single lead ECG data. At first, the ECG data was filtered for power line interference and high frequency noise. Then, a set of slope and polarity-based rule bases were generated from the first 6000 samples, which define templates of R-peak, P-and T-wave detection from the following beats. The algorithm was implemented on Xilinx Spartan III Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). For testing of the algorithm, ECG data was quantised at 8-bit resolution and delivered to the FPGA using synchronous transfer mechanism using parallel port of computer. Xilinx implementation results provided 97.58%, 98.4% and 97.78% detection sensitivity for P-, R- and T-waves, respectively. Different wave features (height, polarity and duration) were detected with an average error rate of 9.3%. The detected wave signatures were clinically validated by medical expert.

Keywords: electrocardiograms; wave peak detection; template matching; FPGA; real-time detection; ECG wave features; field programmable gate arrays.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2015.068112

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2015 Vol.17 No.3, pp.290 - 313

Received: 15 Aug 2014
Accepted: 16 Nov 2014
Published online: 17 Mar 2015 *

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