Microprocessor-Based Ambulatory Biosignal Memory Device

Abstract

It is very important to get the change of biosignals in our daily life in order to make a diagnosis and treat patients in the clinical field, and also important to know the mechanism of our body in the research field. We have developed an ambulatory biosignal memory device to get various kinds of biosignal in our daily life away from the laboratory. Our device is a kind of portable battery-driven microprocessor-based computer system, and this system consists of Z80CPU, 64KB memory, real time clock, serial interface, 10 bit resolution A/D converter and optional circuit added according to the aim of measurement.Here discussed are what such an ambulatory monitoring system should be and of what kind of technological problem should be solved. As a result, it is confirmed first that our ambulatory monitoring device can bring many kinds of useful information about the change of our condition. And at the same time, it is clarified that the insufficiency of memory capacity is the most significant problem of such a digital memory device as our system. Then IC memory card is added as a sub memory, and real time data compression technique is tested here. The result showed that by using these technique, a digital type ambulatory biosignal memory device can have the sufficient memory capacity even in the clinical application.