ECG recording by a microdot thermal printer
Dotsinsky, I.A.
Frontiers of Medical and Biological Engineering the International Journal of the Japan Society of Medical Electronics and Biological Engineering 8(3): 213-220
1997
ISSN/ISBN: 0921-3775 PMID: 9444513 Document Number: 477991
Recently high quality ECG records have been obtained by means of microdot thermal printers, because of their numerous advantages. Usually they contain a shift register in the thermal head and the fast control of the dot locations to be heated is an important software problem. We implemented the TLP 480Z-N Gotemba thermal printer (made in Japan) in our ECG instruments. and elaborated two algorithms for lengthwise and crosswise printing on the paper. They use 'black and white' strips loaded into the shift register by 1-byte parallel data organization. The lengthwise mode can operate in real time, while the crosswise one is intended for memorized signals.