Design and Analysis of Low Cost Non-Invasive Pacemaker Pulse Detection System

This paper presents a simulation based design and analysis a non-invasive pacemaker pulse detection system in biomedical application, that helps improves monitoring and follow-up of cardiac patients by sensing change in magnetic fields caused by current pulse in implanted pacemaker. The pacemaker senses the heart activities and accordingly generates periodic electrical pulses for pacing these activities. Although, it is very difficult to determine pacemaker performance and battery status without any surgery. Therefore, this demands development of an external non-invasive pacemaker pulse detection device for periodic monitoring of implanted pacemaker. While ECG (electrocardiogram) device can offer more specific information for real-time pulse monitoring of the pacemaker, however this can not be used for continuous pulse monitoring and tracking of pacemaker signal. Therefore, for accurate implanted pacemaker pulse timing identification, it needs a specific ECG device. The exact timing of the pacemaker pulses also helps in routine ECG interpretation and residual battery charge determination. This work highlights the possible outcome of continuous real-time monitoring of pacemaker pulses by measuring magnetic field variations caused by the induced current pulses. The detection system of bipolar (biventricular) wireless pulses is designed and implemented using Simulink. This work also captures the pulses of the pacemaker using a simulated inductive sensor block and stores them in a simulation-based file as a record for analyzing pacemaker conditions. The simulated results present that the rise time of the bipolar pacing pulses is reduced from 8 μsec to 2.255 μsec (71.8% reduction) in the response. This stimulation rate is measured accurately in real time, but electromagnetic interference causes false readings.