XBeats: A Real-Time Electrocardiogram Monitoring and Analysis System

Abstract

This work presents XBeats, a novel platform for real-time electrocardiogram monitoring and analysis that uses edge computing and machine learning for early anomaly detection. The platform encompasses a data acquisition ECG patch with 12 leads to collect heart signals, perform on-chip processing, and transmit the data to healthcare providers in real-time for further analysis. The ECG patch provides a dynamically configurable selection of the active ECG leads that could be transmitted to the backend monitoring system. The selection ranges from a single ECG lead to a complete 12-lead ECG testing configuration. XBeats implements a lightweight binary classifier for early anomaly detection to reduce the time to action should abnormal heart conditions occur. This initial detection phase is performed on the edge (i.e., the device paired with the patch) and alerts can be configured to notify designated healthcare providers. Further deep analysis can be performed on the full fidelity 12-lead data sent to the backend. A fully functional prototype of the XBeats has been implemented to demonstrate the feasibly and usability of the proposed system. Performance evaluation shows that XBeats can achieve up to 95.30% detection accuracy for abnormal conditions, while maintaining a high data acquisition rate of up to 441 samples per second. Moreover, the analytical results of the energy consumption profile show that the ECG patch provides up to 37 h of continuous 12-lead ECG streaming.

An Application-Specific Power Consumption Optimization for Wearable Electrocardiogram Devices

“…The firmware of the XBeats ECG patch implements three modes of operations, as introduced in our work [10]. The three modes of operation are: ccontinuous, triggered and disconnected modes [10].…”

“…However, there is still a gap in the presence of devices that support and provide a standard 12-lead ECG testing remotely [8], [9]. We proposed in earlier works [10], [11] a patent-pending remote ECG monitoring patch (i.e., XBeats) that addresses the shortcomings of the existing solutions in the literature. The XBeats ECG patch provides an active real-time ECG RPM system.…”

“…Such a device has a significant power consumption footprint. However, the preliminary analytical power analysis of the XBeats ECG patch showed promising results [10]. Therefore, in this work, we aim to build a systematic power consumption analysis on an RPM device (i.e., XBeats) delivering a standard 12-lead ECG testing.…”

“…• Investigate the power consumption profile of our proposed XBeats [10] ECG patch. The investigation involves three main components in the XBeats patch hardware design: the analog to digital data converter, communication module represented in the main controller and the local SD storage.…”

“…On the other hand, XBeats [10] provides continuous realtime ECG testing using the standard 12-lead settings. The solution addresses the gaps in existing solutions concerning offering a remote and wearable ECG testing device that can be fully configured remotely by the healthcare provider.…”