Posts Tagged ‘ECG’

Researchers at Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland have recently conducted research into compressed sensing and wirelessly transmitting the data via Bluetooth to an iPhone. To find out more visit their project webpage or watch their video clip below.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Arizona’s Department of Surgery are using a Shimmer powered device to monitor daily activities of patients with severe diabetes. This is to identify common activities that can lead to wounds, and ultimately to amputations. The study aims to provide early detection and treatment. Watch the video clip posted by a local news channel below.

Shimmer Research is to attend Arab Health 2010 which taking place from the 25^th – 28^th of January at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. Kieran Daly, VP of Business Development will be representing Shimmer Research, and can be contacted at AmRay Medical’s stand (Hall 2: Stand 2J70).

The Arab Health Exhibition & Congress is the largest healthcare exhibition in the Middle East, and the second largest in the world. Established 35 years ago, it provides a platform for the world’s leading manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors to meet the medical and scientific community in the Middle East and beyond.

Kieran Daly will be displaying the Shimmer unit in operation throughout the event and will be demonstrating the latest ECG application which remotely monitors and displays heart beat rate and QRS waveforms. The application also indicates a normal heart rate, and detects arrhythmias for real time patient monitoring.

To arrange a meeting with Kieran Daly – email us at: info ‘at’ shimmer-research.com.

With the arrival of the New Year, the development of the Shimmer platform has continued apace. The platform has recently been awarded the CE mark, proving it has met EU consumer health and safety requirements for medical equipment. The CE certification also includes the ECG, EMG, and Gyro daughter cards.

The certification demonstrates the platforms conformance and compliance to the requirements of Annex IV of Council Directive 1999/5/EC.

microSD

For members of our website’s user community, the Shimmer microSD Media Guide has just been posted to our Download/Documents section. The guide details the compatibility requirements, qualification list results, and data recovery tools for Shimmer users running applications that utilise the microSD functionality.

To download the guide, please click here.

Having used Shimmer in their studies in conjunction with the TRIL (Technology for Independent Living) centre, Intel has recently published a paper on the validation of the Shimmer ECG, Motion, and GSR daughter cards. The operation of the Shimmer baseboard and daughter cards has been tested through a number of validation processes to determine the accuracy of the boards’ function and their usefulness for biomedical-orientated research applications.

ECG Validation

A number of tests were carried out to validate the Shimmer ECG daughter card as a valid tool for acquiring ambulatory ECG. The tests included the validation of the ECG amplifier and ADC performance by using calibrated input signals as well as an ECG recording from a healthy non-resting subject. Another test carried out was a 5.9 minute ECG recording containing 503 heart beats from a non-resting healthy subject during a moderate walk. The information was captured by the Shimmer ECG and also captured by a Medilog Holter monitoring system. The results indicate that the Shimmer ECG can be used to acquire ambulatory ECG from resting and non-resting human subjects for research application purposes.

Kinematic Validation

To validate the Shimmer platform for use in studies of human gait analysis, temporal gait parameters derived from a tri-axial gyroscope on the Shimmer platform were compared against those acquired simultaneously, by using the codamotion analysis system from Charnwood Dynamics Ltd., UK.

The gait of one normal healthy adult male (age 25) was measured simultaneously by using two Shimmer sensors placed on each shank and the Cartesian Optoelectronic Dynamic Anthropometer (CODA) motion analysis system. Data was recorded whilst the subject performed multiple over-ground walking and running trials along a 15-meter walkway in a motion analysis laboratory. Heel strike and toe-off characteristic points derived from the Shimmer and CODA systems were used to calculate the three temporal gait parameters listed below:

• Stride time
• Stance time
• Swing time

Results show an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC(2,k)) [64] greater than 0.85 in stride, swing, and stance times for ten walking trials and four running trials. These results suggest that the Shimmer platform is a versatile cost-effective tool for use in temporal gait analysis.

GSR Validation

The Shimmer galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor contains an internal resistor network that works as a potential divider and provides a voltage that can be converted by the Shimmer’s ADC to a 12-bit value, used to measure external skin resistance. All skin resistance values were calculated in the Shimmer platform firmware and transmitted to a BioMOBIUS patch for real-time display and persistence to file. The sensor performance was correlated with a commercial Nexus-10 system (Mind Media BV) utilizing a series of known resistors from 10K Ω to 2.2M Ω. Shimmer GSR demonstrated an average mean percentage error of 2.3 percent versus the commercial Nexus-10 that had an average mean error of 4.1 percent.