Telemedicine using mobile satellite communication

Abstract

With a view to providing paramedical care within moving vehicles, a telemedicine technique using mobile satellite communication was proposed. With this technique, the diagnosis from a specialist and the emergency care under his/her instructions would be available on the spot without unnecessary delay. The characteristic problems of this technique were identified as: channel capacity, size of the system, reliability of vital sign transmission, real-time operation and electromagnetic interference. Measures against these problems were devised, and their effectiveness was analyzed. A data format was designed and an experimental system was developed. The system can simultaneously transmit a color image, an audio signal, 3 channels ECG and blood pressures from a mobile station to a ground station. It can transmit an audio signal and error control signals from a ground station to a mobile station in a full duplex mode. Fundamental transmission characteristics were measured in a fixed station. Finally, experiments of medical data transmission were conducted with a navigating ship and an aircraft flying an international route. The measured threshold values of C/N(o) to guarantee satisfactory data reception were well below the lower boundary of C/N(o) of the communication link. Consequently, the feasibility of this technique was verified.

Telemedicine by mobile communication

“…In this experiment, change in the C/N, of the satellite link was less than several dBHz during an approximately 20-hour round-trip flight from Narita, Japan, to Anchorage, USA. these experimlents can be found elsewhere [8,23,24]. …”

“…This method is suitable for serial real-time transmission and has a small out-of-synchronization probability. Fundamental analysis for this transmission has beenreportedelsewhere [8,17]. In this method, the data length of one frame of the serial data must be determined.…”

“…Although the need for ECG transmission from an ambulance has been widely recognized, until very recently there have been relatively few reports on the use of [8,[18][19][20]. Transmission experiments from a moving car were conducted using the system described above.…”

Mobile Telemedicine: A Survey Study

“…For this purpose, these studies [1,8,10,11,13,14,17] can adopt interactive medical video conferencing with the transmission of vital signs using a seamless MSC technique. The data transmission rate of second-generation MSC systems is 10 k-100 k bps; for example, the international maritime satellite communication system (IMMARSAT), has a data transmission rate of 24 kbps.…”

Efficient ECG signal compression using adaptive heart model

“…The computerized ECG processing [1,2], after several years of improvement, can be considered a well-developed application. Many digital ECG analyzing systems, most of which are based on recognition and clustering algorithms, have to recognize any potentially dangerous arrhythmia with at most a few seconds delay.…”