Modelagem de arritmias cardíacas em hardware para validação e avaliação de marca-passos.

Abstract

In past decades, more than 600,000 cardiac pacing devices have been recalled, 40 % due to software problems [8]. This shows that developing bugs-free firmwares for these systems is still a major challenge, and that the methodologies used for validation can not identify scenarios that lead to such failure. Because they are critical systems that can cause harm to patients’ health or even death, it is extremely important to develop equipment with a high level of reliability. This encourages, therefore, the formalization of a validation methodology for these devices. One approach that is pertinent is the creation of a platform that simulates different heartbeat conditions and allows the connection with commercial pacemakers, so as to be able to stimulate and detect flaws in these systems, also allowing the textit debug and the collection of sufficient test coverage for validation of any of these devices. In addition, it also allows the evaluation of the conformity of these devices by the Brazilian Standards (NBR) for implantable electromedical equipment, especially cardiac pacemakers. In addition, the existence of some frameworks established by the academic community for modeling heartbeats with and without arrhythmias, such as the Virtual Heart Model [2]-[3] developed by the University of Pennsylvania, is available free of charge. promising the creation of a platform with the established requirements.