The Programmable ECG Simulator

2011

This paperwork presents the design and test of a microcontroller-based ECG (electrocardiogram) simulator. The ECG simulator is capable of generating nine ECG signals and a calibrated square wave (1 Hz, 1 mV at Lead II). The synthesized signals are: normal sinus rhythm (60 beats per minute – BPM, and 90 BPM), sinus bradycardia (30 BPM), sinus tachycardia (120, 180 and 240 BPM), sinus rhythm with tall T wave (6EC0 BPM), ventricular tachycardia (120 BPM), and a rhythm for asynchronous ventricular pacemaker (60 BPM). The simulated ECG signals can have their amplitudes continuously varied from zero to 2 mV at lead II, through a panel potentiometer, whose knob position does not affect the amplitude of the square wave calibrated signal. The technique used to synthesize the ECG signals, a modified direct digital synthesis (DDS), appeared superior in permitting the generation of signals of very good quality and yet using a relatively small amount of memory. This latter feature enabled the us...

Indonesian Journal of electronics, electromedical engineering, and medical informatics

Medical equipment functional test and calibration is a routine activity that must be carried on periodically. Electrocardiograph (ECG) requires an ECG phantom to calibrate the function. This calibrator is commonly called ECG signal simulator. The purpose of this study is to design a simple ECG signal simulator with ten leads of signals that can be used to test ECG recorders with standard recording procedures. With the ECG signal simulator that was designed and made, the development of signal patterns can be made as needed. The normal human cardiac signal displayed on the ECGSIM software. The potential value that displayed on ECGSIM software can be extracted manually and assembled as a flash program of microcontroller, so this microcontroller will generate some digital code by each parallel port. This digital code then converted as an analog signal by DAC. The electrocardiograph signal simulator output is an analog signal that identical with each lead according to the recording meth...

11th International Conference on Information Science and Information Literacy, 2020

This article presents the design, development, and testing of a low-cost ECG simulator that can be used successfully in higher education institutions and other institutions dealing with medical equipment checking medical equipment. The practical realization of an EKG simulator combines both medical notions and notions of electronics, specific to the field of medical engineering. In this article, in the first part notions related to the anatomy of the cardiac system will be detailed, with the help of these notions you will better understand how an electrocardiograph (ECG) works, which reads the electrical impulses of the heart transformed into waveforms. The second part of the paper is the practical part of this project, the design of the electrical circuit, the simulation, and the practical realization (soldering the electronic components on a PCB and final assembly of all ECG components by integrating them into a specific housing). The last phase is dedicated to testing the device on a vital function monitor that belongs to a Cardiolife defibrillator. This simulator can perform 2 phases, a 60 bpm signal and a 120 bpm signal, having a button attached to the housing to change the signal, the difference of the signal is signaled by a green LED that is also on the surface plastic housing. The EKG simulator is mainly a signal generator, which mimics the signal generated by the human body.

2019

ECG Simulator is a tool to simulate ECG signals. This device is useful for testing ECG devices when repairing, for research purposes on ECG signals or for educational purposes. ECG Simulator or often called Phantom ECG in principle is a signal generator in the form of "ECG like" signal or ECG signal that has been recorded. According to the researchers' observations, the ECG Simulator that was made there are still some shortcomings, namely PC-based, only 2 lead signals, limited BPM values and no sensitivity settings. Judging from the importance of using these tools as a standard ECG comparison tool, the researchers intend to design a tool entitled "ECG Simulator Design". This design is based on Arduino and uses 12-bit Digital to Analog Converter to convert Digital data which is the output of Arduino into Analog data in the form of ECG signals. In this study, researchers made the design of the ECG Simulator which is a tool for calibrating ECG equipment. The pur...

Jurnal Teknokes

Electrocardiograph (ECG) is one of the diagnostic sciences that is often studied in modern medicine, used to detect damage to the components of the heart or disorders of the heart rhythm called arrhythmias. The purpose of this research is to develop an Electrocardiograph simulator that is equipped with arrhythmia. The main design consists of an Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller, MCP4921 DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) circuit, a network resistor, and a sensitivity selection circuit. The MCP4921 type DAC converts the digital signal data into analog data which will then be forwarded to the resistor network circuit as a signal formation for each lead. The basic signal image data used for the formation of normal Electrocardiograph and arrhythmias were taken from the Electrocardiograph recorder using Phantom Electrocardiograph. Based on the readings on the Beat Per Minute setting of the module to the Beat Per Minute printout on the Electrocardiograph recorder, the error rate value for ...

International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering (iJOE), 2022

The aim of this work is to design and implement an ECG generator for didactic biomedical engineering laboratory. The proposed generator provides analog ECG signals using synthesized or experimental records. The technique used in this work consists to generate the desired ECG waveforms through the PWM outputs of an Arduino board and low-pass filter. To provide many educational functions in both analog instrumentation and digital processing, the generator supplies output voltages in asymmetric or differential mode. To allow the user to setup the ECG signal to be generated, a LabVIEW application has been implemented. Experimentations on proposed generator and results were accomplished using the NI USB 6009 acquisition module and NI MAX software.

This article reports the design and development of an ECG simulator intended for use in the testing calibration and maintenance of electrocardiographic equipment. It generates a lead II signal having a profile that varies with heart rate in a manner which reflects the true in-vivo variation. Facilities are provided for user adjustment of heart rate, signal amplitude, QRS complex up-slope, and the relative amplitudes of the P-wave and T-wave. The heart rate can be set within the range 30-200 beats/minute in steps of 1 beat/minute. The amplitude of the QRS complex can be adjusted from 0.1-20mV in 0.1mV steps, while its up-slope can be set between 10 and 50ms with a 1ms resolution. The amplitude of the P-wave can be varied from 5-40% and that of the T-wave from 10-80% of the amplitude of the QRS complex with a 1% resolution.

Biomedical Engineering, 2000

Various models of electrocardiographic signal (ECS) simulators are used in current medical practice for testing the operation of electrocardiographs. The ECS simulators allow the metrological performance and measuring algorithms of various electrocardiographs to be tested. This is necessary for comparing the results of examination obtained using different electrocardiographs. The capability of an ECS simulator for testing metrological performance of modern digital electrocardiographs depends on the parameters of the simulator signals .

18th International Congress of Metrology, 2017

In Mexico, the concern on improving the healthcare system has always been of great importance. The relevance of this development is the impact on the improvement of the quality of health system along with human health condition. An ECG simulator oversees calibrating ECG machines, including monitoring, and diagnose. Thus, it is important to be completely sure if an ECG simulator is working according to their specifications, in order to assure the good performance of electrocardiographs. The aim of this method is to describe a calibration procedure for ECG simulators. A home-designed amplifier was built to amplify the small signal from the ECG simulator for the oscilloscope to display to be able to measure its amplitude and frequency, and compare it with manufacturer's specifications. The amplifier was calibrated using Fluke ProSim 8, as a result a calibration curve and equation was obtained. The restlessness arises from experience and investigations from other authors where they have reported misdiagnosis in certain diseases due to misreading of ECGs, noticing that medical staff base their diagnosis on medical devices. For that reason, an erroneous diagnosis can lead to wrong treatments for patients representing a waste of medical resources and more important potential death.

Computing in Cardiology 2013, 2013

Recent design of electrocardiographic simulators should be consistent with the international standard IEC 60601-2-47 issued 2012, which recommends the measurements, detections and interpretative statements of the ECG to be tested by digitized ECGs signals taken from five standard databases. In accordance to this recommendation we designed a high-resolution ECG tester simulator for direct digital-toanalogue conversion of data from PC. The signals selected from a database are sent from the PC to the Simulator via USB. The prototype has 16 independent channels, high sampling frequency of 2 kHz, and 286 nV/bit amplitude respond of the analogue output. The power-line interference is minimized by a galvanic isolation of the communication between the PC and the simulator. The need of build-in circuit for a Wilson Central Terminal is avoided by the use of 12-Standardleads to 8-primary-leads transfer formulas. In-house PC software in Visual C is developed to select and control the operation mode of the simulator. The transmitted signals are real-time visualized on the PC monitor.