How the project addresses the issue
The prototype uses a single-lead ECG sensor, an ultra-low-power analogue front end and an ESP32 processor to acquire ECG at 256 samples per second. The signal is filtered on the device and divided into five-second windows. A quality-checking stage rejects segments affected by motion, poor contact or electrical interference. Two lightweight and interpretable waveform features – Hjorth mobility and peak-to-average power ratio – are then passed to a logistic-regression model embedded in the firmware. A rolling decision from recent segments can provide a stable result in about 30 seconds, while keeping processing local to improve speed and privacy.
In a separate subject-independent analysis using public ECG datasets, the approach achieved up to 98.3% accuracy on a small held-out cohort. Prototype functionality has also been demonstrated with three healthy volunteers using wet-gel and textile dry electrodes. These results are preliminary and require validation in larger, independently recorded cohorts, including people with heart failure, before clinical use.