Development and evaluation of a course module on cardiac signal procesing

We report our experiences with a new course module covering cardiac signal processing in an instrumentation course intended for advanced undergraduates. The module covers the state of the art in analog, digital and mixed signal processing methods with a focus on the latest design approaches. This includes low-power Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and switch/capacitor methods in cardiac pacemakers and advanced DSP methods in external electrocardiographic instruments. Adaptive signal processing is introduced as a method to extract a desired signal component in the presence of others. The evaluation is based on a challenge. Students are presented with the methods and a set of example applications in classroom lectures. They are then given a new cardiac signal processing problem and asked to work collaboratively in a “think, pair, share” exercise. They report their results to the class for discussion. The basis of the evaluation is the students’ ability to identify an effective signal processing strategy. Acknowledgement This work was supported in part by the Engineering Research Centers Program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number EEC-9876363.