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Session Number: 1609

Development and Evaluation of a Course Module on Cardiac Signal Procesing

Alan V. Sahakian, Eric Y. Yang Biomedical Engineering Department, Northwestern University

Abstract

We report our experiences with a new course module covering cardiac signal processing in an instrumentation course intended for advanced undergraduates. The module covers the state of the art in analog, digital and mixed signal processing methods with a focus on the latest design approaches. This includes low-power Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and switch/capacitor methods in cardiac pacemakers and advanced DSP methods in external electrocardiographic instruments. Adaptive signal processing is introduced as a method to extract a desired signal component in the presence of others.

The evaluation is based on a challenge. Students are presented with the methods and a set of example applications in classroom lectures. They are then given a new cardiac signal processing problem and asked to work collaboratively in a “think, pair, share” exercise. They report their results to the class for discussion. The basis of the evaluation is the students’ ability to identify an effective signal processing strategy.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported in part by the Engineering Research Centers Program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number EEC-9876363.

Introduction

Many modern medical instruments rely heavily on signal processing. Electrocardiographic monitors and implantable cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators all need to perform signal processing but each has a very different set of constraints, e.g. energy. Very different methods are employed, for example subthreshold analog or switch/capacitor implementations with only very limited DSP in a cardiac pacemaker, and nearly full DSP implementations in an external device. Within the category of DSP there are many different possible approaches.

We developed a course module, partly web-based, which presents several relevant signal processing methods and shows their application.

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright Ó 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Sahakian, A. (2002, June), Development And Evaluation Of A Course Module On Cardiac Signal Processing Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10512