Handheld interpreting electrocardiograph

• US 7,236,818 B2
• Filed: 10/12/2001
• Issued: 06/26/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/12/2001
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: GE Medical Systems Information Technologies Incorporated (GE Healthcare Technologies, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: GE Medical Systems Information Technologies Incorporated (GE Healthcare Technologies, Inc.)
• Inventors: Michalski, Robert, McLeod, Michael P., Bechtel, Richard
• Primary Examiner(s): Layno; Carl
• Assistant Examiner(s): Oropeza; Frances P.
• Application Number:
  US09/976,538
• Publication Number:
  US 20030073915A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,083 Days
• Field of Search: 600/508, 600/509, 600/521, 600/523, 600/525, 128/903, 607/4, 607/5, 607/9, 607/30, 607/32
• US Class Current: 600/509
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/339 Displays specially adapted therefor
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/349 Detecting specific parameters of the electrocardiograph cycle
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7217 of noise originating from a therapeutic or surgical apparatus, e.g. from a pacemaker
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7445 Display arrangements, e.g. multiple display units
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7475 User input or interface means, e.g. keyboard, pointing device, joystick
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/903 Radio telemetry

Abstract

A hand-held electrocardiograph system with automatic analysis and interpretation is provided. The electrocardiograph includes an acquisition element adapted to be coupled to a patient through a set of relatively short leadwires and a hand-held, battery powered portable processing and display element coupled to the acquisition element and controlled through a graphical user interface.

Claims

1. A twelve channel electrocardiograph system comprising:

an acquisition element adapted to be disposed on a chest of a patent, to generate a twelve lead electrocardiograph signal and to be coupled to the patient through a set of relatively short leadwires;

a hand-held, battery powered portable processing element that is physically separate from the acquisition element and coupled to the acquisition element through a connector cable, said portable processing unit controlled by a central processing unit through a graphical user interface, wherein said central processing unit provides a relatively low frequency reference clock frequency to the acquisition element through the connector cable, wherein said acquisition element further comprising a digital signal processor and an analog-to-digital converter that samples the twelve lead electrocardiogram signal under control of the digital signal processor and a plurality of programmable filters within the digital signal processor specifically adapted to filter the twelve lead electrocardiogram signal from the analog-to-digital converter under control of the central processing unit and wherein said digital signal processor further comprises a relatively high frequency internal clock that is synchronized to the relatively low frequency reference frequency of the central processing unit via a phase-locked loop; and

a windows operating system within the portable processing element that controls the acquisition element and portable processing element through the graphical user interface.

2. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the processing element further comprises a display.

3. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 2 wherein the display further comprises a liquid crystal display.

4. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 3 wherein the liquid crystal display further comprises a color or monochrome graphical display with sufficient resolution to display waveforms.

5. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 2 wherein the display further comprises a touch screen interface.

6. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the processing element further comprises a compact flash card or similar memory expansion slot.

7. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 6 wherein the compact flash expansion slot further comprises a compact flash read only memory disposed in the compact flash card expansion slot.

8. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the processing element further comprises an infrared transceiver for communications.

9. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the processing element further comprises a radio frequency transceiver for communications.

10. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the processing element further comprises an audio recording unit.

11. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the acquisition element further comprises a plurality of signal conditioning circuits.

12. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the acquisition element further comprises a baseline sway filter.

13. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the acquisition element further comprises a pacemaker pulse detector adapted to detect pacemaker signals.

14. The electrocardiograph system as in claim 1 wherein the acquisition element further comprises analysis and interpretation.