Wavelet-based encoding scheme for controlling size of compressed ECG segments in telecardiology systems

One of the major issues in time-critical medical applications using wireless technology is the size of the payload packet, which is generally designed to be very small to improve the transmission process. Using small packets to transmit continuous ECG data is still costly. Thus, data compression is commonly used to reduce the huge amount of ECG data transmitted through telecardiology devices. In this paper, a new ECG compression scheme is introduced to ensure that the compressed ECG segments fit into the available limited payload packets, while maintaining a fixed CR to preserve the diagnostic information. The scheme automatically divides the ECG block into segments, while maintaining other compression parameters fixed. This scheme adopts discrete wavelet transform (DWT) method to decompose the ECG data, bit-field preserving (BFP) method to preserve the quality of the DWT coefficients, and a modified running-length encoding (RLE) scheme to encode the coefficients. The proposed dynamic compression scheme showed promising results with a percentage packet reduction (PR) of about 85.39% at low percentage root-mean square difference (PRD) values, less than 1%. ECG records from MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database were used to test the proposed method. The simulation results showed promising performance that satisfies the needs of portable telecardiology systems, like the limited payload size and low power consumption

Model Based Compressed Sensing Reconstruction Algorithms for ECG Telemonitoring in WBANs

Wireless Body area networks (WBANs) consist of sensors that continuously monitor and transmit real time vital signals to a nearby coordinator and then to a remote terminal via the Internet. One of the most important signals for monitoring in WBANs is the electrocardiography (ECG) signal. The design of an accurate and energy efficient ECG telemonitoring system can be achieved by: i) reducing the amount of data that should be transmitted ii) minimizing the computational operations executed at any transmitter/receiver in a WBAN. To this end, compressed sensing (CS) approaches can offer a viable solution. In this paper, we propose two novel CS based ECG reconstruction algorithms that minimize the samples that are required to be transmitted for an accurate reconstruction, by exploiting the block structure of the ECG in the time domain (TD) and in an uncorrelated domain (UD). The proposed schemes require the solutions of second-order cone programming (SOCP) problems that are usually tackled by computational demanding interior point (IP) methods. To solve these problems efficiently, we develop a path-wise coordinate descent based scheme. The reconstruction accuracy is evaluated by the percentage root-mean-square difference (PRD) metric. A reconstructed signal is acceptable if and only if PRD<9%PRD<9%. Simulation studies carried out with real electrocardiographic (ECG) data, show that the proposed schemes, operating in both the TD and in the UD as compared to the conventional CS techniques, reduce the Compression Ratio (CR) by 20%20% and 44%44% respectively, offering at the same time significantly low computational complexity

A Framework for Remote Patient Monitoring to Diagnose the Cardiac Disorders

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is an efficient diagnostic tool to monitor the electrical activity of heart. One of the most vital benefit of using telecommunication technologies in medical field is to provide cardiac health care at a distance. Telecardiology is the most efficient way to provide faster and affordable health care for the cardiac patients located at rural areas. Early detection of cardiac disorders can minimize cardiac death rates. In real time monitoring process, ECG data from a patient usually takes large storage space in the order of gigabytes (GB). Hence, compression of bulky ECG signal is a common requirement for faster transmission of cardiac signals using wireless technologies. Several techniques such as the Fourier transform based methods, wavelet transform based methods, etc., have been reported for compression of ECG data. Though Fourier transform is suitable for analyzing the stationary signals. An improved version, the wavelet transform allows the analysis of non-stationary signal. It provides a uniform resolution for all the scales, however, wavelet transform faces difficulties like uniformly poor resolution due to limited size of the basic wavelet function and it is nonadaptive in nature. A data adaptive method to analyse non-stationary signal is based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD), where the bases are derived from the multivariate data which are nonlinear and non-stationary. A new ECG signal compression technique based on EMD is proposed, in which first EMD technique is applied to decompose the ECG signal into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Next, downsampling, discrete cosine transform (DCT), window filtering and Huffman encoding processes are used sequentially to compress the ECG signal. The compressed ECG is then transmitted as short messageservice (SMS) message using a global system for mobile communications (GSM) modem. First the AT-command ‘+CMGF’ is used to set the SMS to text mode. Next, the GSM modem uses the AT-command ‘+CMGS’ to send a SMS message. The received text SMS messages are transferred to a personal computer (PC) using blue-tooth. All text SMS messages are combined in PC as per the received sequence and fed as data input to decompress the compressed ECG data. The decompression method which is used to reconstruct the original ECG signal consists of Huffman decoding, inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) and spline interpolation. The performance of the compression and decompression techniques are evaluated in terms of compression ratio (CR) and percent root mean square difference (PRD) respectively by using both European ST-T database and Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH) arrhythmia database. The average values of CR and PRD for selected ECG records of European ST-T database are found to be 23.5:1 and 1.38 respectively. All 48 ECG records of MIT-BIH arrhythmia database are used for comparison purpose and the average values of CR and PRD are found to be 23.74:1 and 1.49 respectively. The reconstructed ECG signal is then used for detection of cardiac disorders like bradycardia, tachycardia and ischemia. The preprocessing stage of the detection technique filters the normalized signal to reduce noise components and detects the QRS-complexes. Next, ECG feature extraction, ischemic beat classification and ischemic episode detection processes are applied sequentially to the filtered ECG by using rule based medical knowledge. The ST-segment and T-wave are the two features generally used for ischemic beat classification. As per the recommendation of ESC (European Society of cardiology) the ischemic episode detection procedure considers minimum 30s duration of signal. The performance of the ischemic episode detection technique is evaluated in terms of sensitivity (Se) and positive predictive accuracy (PPA) by using European ST-T database. This technique achieves an average Se and PPA of 83.08% and 92.42% respectively

Recent Application in Biometrics

In the recent years, a number of recognition and authentication systems based on biometric measurements have been proposed. Algorithms and sensors have been developed to acquire and process many different biometric traits. Moreover, the biometric technology is being used in novel ways, with potential commercial and practical implications to our daily activities. The key objective of the book is to provide a collection of comprehensive references on some recent theoretical development as well as novel applications in biometrics. The topics covered in this book reflect well both aspects of development. They include biometric sample quality, privacy preserving and cancellable biometrics, contactless biometrics, novel and unconventional biometrics, and the technical challenges in implementing the technology in portable devices. The book consists of 15 chapters. It is divided into four sections, namely, biometric applications on mobile platforms, cancelable biometrics, biometric encryption, and other applications. The book was reviewed by editors Dr. Jucheng Yang and Dr. Norman Poh. We deeply appreciate the efforts of our guest editors: Dr. Girija Chetty, Dr. Loris Nanni, Dr. Jianjiang Feng, Dr. Dongsun Park and Dr. Sook Yoon, as well as a number of anonymous reviewers

Design of a secure architecture for the exchange of biomedical information in m-Health scenarios

El paradigma de m-Salud (salud móvil) aboga por la integración masiva de las más avanzadas tecnologías de comunicación, red móvil y sensores en aplicaciones y sistemas de salud, para fomentar el despliegue de un nuevo modelo de atención clínica centrada en el usuario/paciente. Este modelo tiene por objetivos el empoderamiento de los usuarios en la gestión de su propia salud (p.ej. aumentando sus conocimientos, promocionando estilos de vida saludable y previniendo enfermedades), la prestación de una mejor tele-asistencia sanitaria en el hogar para ancianos y pacientes crónicos y una notable disminución del gasto de los Sistemas de Salud gracias a la reducción del número y la duración de las hospitalizaciones. No obstante, estas ventajas, atribuidas a las aplicaciones de m-Salud, suelen venir acompañadas del requisito de un alto grado de disponibilidad de la información biomédica de sus usuarios para garantizar una alta calidad de servicio, p.ej. fusionar varias señales de un usuario para obtener un diagnóstico más preciso. La consecuencia negativa de cumplir esta demanda es el aumento directo de las superficies potencialmente vulnerables a ataques, lo que sitúa a la seguridad (y a la privacidad) del modelo de m-Salud como factor crítico para su éxito. Como requisito no funcional de las aplicaciones de m-Salud, la seguridad ha recibido menos atención que otros requisitos técnicos que eran más urgentes en etapas de desarrollo previas, tales como la robustez, la eficiencia, la interoperabilidad o la usabilidad. Otro factor importante que ha contribuido a retrasar la implementación de políticas de seguridad sólidas es que garantizar un determinado nivel de seguridad implica unos costes que pueden ser muy relevantes en varias dimensiones, en especial en la económica (p.ej. sobrecostes por la inclusión de hardware extra para la autenticación de usuarios), en el rendimiento (p.ej. reducción de la eficiencia y de la interoperabilidad debido a la integración de elementos de seguridad) y en la usabilidad (p.ej. configuración más complicada de dispositivos y aplicaciones de salud debido a las nuevas opciones de seguridad). Por tanto, las soluciones de seguridad que persigan satisfacer a todos los actores del contexto de m-Salud (usuarios, pacientes, personal médico, personal técnico, legisladores, fabricantes de dispositivos y equipos, etc.) deben ser robustas y al mismo tiempo minimizar sus costes asociados. Esta Tesis detalla una propuesta de seguridad, compuesta por cuatro grandes bloques interconectados, para dotar de seguridad a las arquitecturas de m-Salud con unos costes reducidos. El primer bloque define un esquema global que proporciona unos niveles de seguridad e interoperabilidad acordes con las características de las distintas aplicaciones de m-Salud. Este esquema está compuesto por tres capas diferenciadas, diseñadas a la medidas de los dominios de m-Salud y de sus restricciones, incluyendo medidas de seguridad adecuadas para la defensa contra las amenazas asociadas a sus aplicaciones de m-Salud. El segundo bloque establece la extensión de seguridad de aquellos protocolos estándar que permiten la adquisición, el intercambio y/o la administración de información biomédica -- por tanto, usados por muchas aplicaciones de m-Salud -- pero no reúnen los niveles de seguridad detallados en el esquema previo. Estas extensiones se concretan para los estándares biomédicos ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD y SCP-ECG. El tercer bloque propone nuevas formas de fortalecer la seguridad de los tests biomédicos, que constituyen el elemento esencial de muchas aplicaciones de m-Salud de carácter clínico, mediante codificaciones novedosas. Finalmente el cuarto bloque, que se sitúa en paralelo a los anteriores, selecciona herramientas genéricas de seguridad (elementos de autenticación y criptográficos) cuya integración en los otros bloques resulta idónea, y desarrolla nuevas herramientas de seguridad, basadas en señal -- embedding y keytagging --, para reforzar la protección de los test biomédicos.The paradigm of m-Health (mobile health) advocates for the massive integration of advanced mobile communications, network and sensor technologies in healthcare applications and systems to foster the deployment of a new, user/patient-centered healthcare model enabling the empowerment of users in the management of their health (e.g. by increasing their health literacy, promoting healthy lifestyles and the prevention of diseases), a better home-based healthcare delivery for elderly and chronic patients and important savings for healthcare systems due to the reduction of hospitalizations in number and duration. It is a fact that many m-Health applications demand high availability of biomedical information from their users (for further accurate analysis, e.g. by fusion of various signals) to guarantee high quality of service, which on the other hand entails increasing the potential surfaces for attacks. Therefore, it is not surprising that security (and privacy) is commonly included among the most important barriers for the success of m-Health. As a non-functional requirement for m-Health applications, security has received less attention than other technical issues that were more pressing at earlier development stages, such as reliability, eficiency, interoperability or usability. Another fact that has contributed to delaying the enforcement of robust security policies is that guaranteeing a certain security level implies costs that can be very relevant and that span along diferent dimensions. These include budgeting (e.g. the demand of extra hardware for user authentication), performance (e.g. lower eficiency and interoperability due to the addition of security elements) and usability (e.g. cumbersome configuration of devices and applications due to security options). Therefore, security solutions that aim to satisfy all the stakeholders in the m-Health context (users/patients, medical staff, technical staff, systems and devices manufacturers, regulators, etc.) shall be robust and, at the same time, minimize their associated costs. This Thesis details a proposal, composed of four interrelated blocks, to integrate appropriate levels of security in m-Health architectures in a cost-efcient manner. The first block designes a global scheme that provides different security and interoperability levels accordingto how critical are the m-Health applications to be implemented. This consists ofthree layers tailored to the m-Health domains and their constraints, whose security countermeasures defend against the threats of their associated m-Health applications. Next, the second block addresses the security extension of those standard protocols that enable the acquisition, exchange and/or management of biomedical information | thus, used by many m-Health applications | but do not meet the security levels described in the former scheme. These extensions are materialized for the biomedical standards ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD and SCP-ECG. Then, the third block proposes new ways of enhancing the security of biomedical standards, which are the centerpiece of many clinical m-Health applications, by means of novel codings. Finally the fourth block, with is parallel to the others, selects generic security methods (for user authentication and cryptographic protection) whose integration in the other blocks results optimal, and also develops novel signal-based methods (embedding and keytagging) for strengthening the security of biomedical tests. The layer-based extensions of the standards ISO/IEEE 11073 PHD and SCP-ECG can be considered as robust, cost-eficient and respectful with their original features and contents. The former adds no attributes to its data information model, four new frames to the service model |and extends four with new sub-frames|, and only one new sub-state to the communication model. Furthermore, a lightweight architecture consisting of a personal health device mounting a 9 MHz processor and an aggregator mounting a 1 GHz processor is enough to transmit a 3-lead electrocardiogram in real-time implementing the top security layer. The extra requirements associated to this extension are an initial configuration of the health device and the aggregator, tokens for identification/authentication of users if these devices are to be shared and the implementation of certain IHE profiles in the aggregator to enable the integration of measurements in healthcare systems. As regards to the extension of SCP-ECG, it only adds a new section with selected security elements and syntax in order to protect the rest of file contents and provide proper role-based access control. The overhead introduced in the protected SCP-ECG is typically 2{13 % of the regular file size, and the extra delays to protect a newly generated SCP-ECG file and to access it for interpretation are respectively a 2{10 % and a 5 % of the regular delays. As regards to the signal-based security techniques developed, the embedding method is the basis for the proposal of a generic coding for tests composed of biomedical signals, periodic measurements and contextual information. This has been adjusted and evaluated with electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram-based tests, proving the objective clinical quality of the coded tests, the capacity of the coding-access system to operate in real-time (overall delays of 2 s for electrocardiograms and 3.3 s for electroencephalograms) and its high usability. Despite of the embedding of security and metadata to enable m-Health services, the compression ratios obtained by this coding range from ' 3 in real-time transmission to ' 5 in offline operation. Complementarily, keytagging permits associating information to images (and other signals) by means of keys in a secure and non-distorting fashion, which has been availed to implement security measures such as image authentication, integrity control and location of tampered areas, private captioning with role-based access control, traceability and copyright protection. The tests conducted indicate a remarkable robustness-capacity tradeoff that permits implementing all this measures simultaneously, and the compatibility of keytagging with JPEG2000 compression, maintaining this tradeoff while setting the overall keytagging delay in only ' 120 ms for any image size | evidencing the scalability of this technique. As a general conclusion, it has been demonstrated and illustrated with examples that there are various, complementary and structured manners to contribute in the implementation of suitable security levels for m-Health architectures with a moderate cost in budget, performance, interoperability and usability. The m-Health landscape is evolving permanently along all their dimensions, and this Thesis aims to do so with its security. Furthermore, the lessons learned herein may offer further guidance for the elaboration of more comprehensive and updated security schemes, for the extension of other biomedical standards featuring low emphasis on security or privacy, and for the improvement of the state of the art regarding signal-based protection methods and applications

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is a rapidly evolving field as new technologies are implemented for example for the development of wireless sensors, quality data transmission. Using the Internet applications such as counseling, clinical consultation support and home care monitoring and management are more and more realized, which improves access to high level medical care in underserved areas. The 23 chapters of this book present manifold examples of telemedicine treating both theoretical and practical foundations and application scenarios

State-of-the-Art Sensors Technology in Spain 2015: Volume 1

This book provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art sensors technology in specific leading areas. Industrial researchers, engineers and professionals can find information on the most advanced technologies and developments, together with data processing. Further research covers specific devices and technologies that capture and distribute data to be processed by applying dedicated techniques or procedures, which is where sensors play the most important role. The book provides insights and solutions for different problems covering a broad spectrum of possibilities, thanks to a set of applications and solutions based on sensory technologies. Topics include: • Signal analysis for spectral power • 3D precise measurements • Electromagnetic propagation • Drugs detection • e-health environments based on social sensor networks • Robots in wireless environments, navigation, teleoperation, object grasping, demining • Wireless sensor networks • Industrial IoT • Insights in smart cities • Voice recognition • FPGA interfaces • Flight mill device for measurements on insects • Optical systems: UV, LEDs, lasers, fiber optics • Machine vision • Power dissipation • Liquid level in fuel tanks • Parabolic solar tracker • Force sensors • Control for a twin roto

Shortest Route at Dynamic Location with Node Combination-Dijkstra Algorithm

Abstract— Online transportation has become a basic requirement of the general public in support of all activities to go to work, school or vacation to the sights. Public transportation services compete to provide the best service so that consumers feel comfortable using the services offered, so that all activities are noticed, one of them is the search for the shortest route in picking the buyer or delivering to the destination. Node Combination method can minimize memory usage and this methode is more optimal when compared to A* and Ant Colony in the shortest route search like Dijkstra algorithm, but can’t store the history node that has been passed. Therefore, using node combination algorithm is very good in searching the shortest distance is not the shortest route. This paper is structured to modify the node combination algorithm to solve the problem of finding the shortest route at the dynamic location obtained from the transport fleet by displaying the nodes that have the shortest distance and will be implemented in the geographic information system in the form of map to facilitate the use of the system. Keywords— Shortest Path, Algorithm Dijkstra, Node Combination, Dynamic Location (key words