PARIS – European research institute IMEC has unveiled a low-power intra-cardiac signal processing chip to help diagnose ventricular fibrillation.
IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) said the chip consumes 20µW when all channels are active and features three power-efficient, intra-cardiac signal readout channels, or ECG channels. Each of these ECG channels is equipped with a precision low-power ECG signal readout circuit and an analog signal processor to extract the data of the ECG signal for detection of ventricular fibrillation.
Imec’s low-power chip for intra-cardiac ventricular fibrillation detection
The research center claimed that the chip includes features that improve the functionality of Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy devices. Firstly, the low-power accelerometer readout channel enables rate adaptive pacing. Secondly, to handle intra-thoracic fluid analysis, the chip includes a 16-level digital sinusoidal current generator and provides 82db wide dynamic range bio-impedance measurement, in the range of 0.1O-4.4kO with 35mO resolution, and is claimed to achieve more than 97-percent accuracy.