Design of a Low-Cost ECG Signal Acquisition and Analysis System Using Raspberry Pi for Cardiac Screening in Edo State

Cardiac screening programmes in community settings in Edo State are constrained by the limited availability and high cost of ECG analysis infrastructure, motivating the development of affordable alternatives using widely available computing platforms. This study designs a low-cost ECG signal acquisition and analysis system using a Raspberry Pi single-board computer for cardiac screening at community health fairs and peripheral clinics in Edo State. The signal acquisition front end uses an AD8232 ECG module for instrumentation amplification, signal conditioning, and lead-off detection, connected to the Raspberry Pi's analogue-to-digital converter via an external MCP3008 SPI chip. A Python-based data acquisition and display application was developed, providing real-time waveform visualization, heart rate calculation, and basic R-peak detection using a pan-Tompkins algorithm implementation. The system stores ECG traces as PDF reports for offline review. Total hardware cost was estimated at under fifteen thousand naira. Validation testing on forty healthy volunteers at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital compared system heart rate measurements and R-peak detection accuracy against a certified clinical ECG machine, demonstrating mean heart rate error of plus or minus 2 beats per minute and R-peak detection accuracy of 97.2 percent. Signal-to-noise ratio measurements confirmed that the 50 Hz notch filter design adequately attenuated power line interference. The system was successfully operated by non-engineering clinic staff after a thirty-minute training session. The study recommends extending the system to twelve-lead ECG capability and conducting a formal clinical validation study including arrhythmia detection assessment. Keywords: ECG acquisition, Raspberry Pi, cardiac screening, low-cost system, Edo State.