Ambulatory Examination of CVD Patients, PI: Dr Simon Bao, I²R

This project aims to provide a practical solution to the continuous monitoring of the cardio-physiological status for the high risk cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients under their daily life environment based on the body area network platform that is shown by figure1. It helps to detect and capture critical rare events that are usually not reflected in a single clinical ECG recording or even in a 24-hour Holter monitor recording. There are many challenging issues in ambulatory monitoring compared with clinical monitoring, one of which is that the cardio-physiological status is highly dependent on the physical activity context. While it is important to detect abnormalities of ECG, it is as same important to identify the physical activities at the same time.  Therefore, the main research issues in this project are: real-time physiological sensor (e.g. ECG) data processing, physical activity sensor (e.g. accelerometer) data processing and data mining (fusion).

		Figure1 – Illustration of wireless body area network platform (it is composed of a number of tiny wireless sensor nodes and a PDA like body gateway)
Figure2 shows all the functional modules in the ambulatory examination and management system that we are going to develop for this project. ● Vital signal analysis – noise filtering and artifact removal for the signal accuracy (e.g. QRS  complex and HRV of ECG signal), accurate detection of ECG abnormalities such as AF, PVC, etc ● Activity, postural and gait analysis – accurate detection and classification of basic daily life activities, body postures and gait anomalies. ● Context based data fusion – detection and alerting of critical rare events (e.g. ventricular arrhythmia) ● Data mining – detection or prediction of possible cardiac problems that might induce heart attack in a long term
Figure2 – Function modules of the wearable system