At this week’s International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC2014), imec and Holst Centre, together with Olympus, demonstrated a low-power single channel implantable electrocardiography (ECG) acquisition chip with analog feature extraction, which enables precise monitoring of the signal activity in a selected frequency band.

Leadless Pacemakers with ultra-small size and ultra-low power consumption are emerging, improving analysis and clinical research of the intra-cardiac rhythm, and as a result, improving patients’ quality of life.

The new low-power ECG acquisition chip advances the state-of-the-art by consuming only 680nA when all features are active, and also provides competitive performance, such as input SNR>70dB, CMRR >90dB, PSRR >80dB without any external passive components. By equipping an ultra-low power analog feature extractor, the new chip is capable of assisting digital signal processor platforms for the implementation of low-power heartbeat detection algorithms.

Imec’s portfolio on integrated circuits for implantable cardiac monitoring applications is available for licensing. It also includes a low-power ASIC for intra-cardiac ventricular fibrillation detection, featuring best-in-class three low-power cardiac signal readout channel, one bio-impedance measurement channel, and low-latency beat detection feature, all with 20mW power dissipation (ISSCC2013).