Design and development of DSP enabled low-cost ECG machine

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the most common cardiac test to examine the function and electrical activities of the human heart but at the same time existing ECG machines are costly. This research work aims to present the design and implementation of a low-cost 3 lead ECG machine. It is built around a 32-bit low-cost Arm Cortex M3 microcontroller, AD8232 ECG sensor, and 3.5-inch TFT touch screen display. Digital Signal Processing (DSP) based algorithm is developed to filter out 50Hz powerline noise, base-line wander noise, and other noises of motion artifacts. Normally cascading of expensive analog filters are used in the removal of noise in the ECG machines but authors preferred to filter out noises using digital filters and reducing the component's cost. The developed unit can be used as a portable and handheld ECG machine due to its lightweight and compact size.