Real-time visualization of time series

In this section, we further demonstrate the versatility of our framework to plot general time series data for biomedical applications. In particular, we will display an ECG in real time. As a brief introduction, an ECG is a very commonly used diagnostic and monitoring tool to detect abnormalities in the heart. ECG surface recording essentially probes the electrical activities of the heart. For example, the biggest spike (called a QRS complex) typically corresponds to the depolarization of the ventricles of the heart (the highly muscular chambers of the heart that pump blood). A careful analysis of the ECG can be a very powerful, noninvasive method for distinguishing many heart diseases clinically, including many forms of arrhythmia and heart attacks.

Getting ready

We begin by importing a computer-generated ECG data stream. The ECG data stream is stored in data_ecg.h (only a small portion of the data stream is provided here):

float data_ecg[]={0.396568808f...