In this article, we propose a new algorithm using the characteristics of reconstructed phase portraits by delay-coordinate mapping utilizing lag rotundity for a real-time detection of QRS complexes in ECG signals. In reconstructing phase portrait the mapping parameters, time delay, and mapping dimension play important roles in shaping of portraits drawn in a new dimensional space. Experimentally, the optimal mapping time delay for detection of QRS complexes turned out to be 20 ms. To explore the meaning of this time delay and the proper mapping dimension, we applied a fill factor, mutual information, and autocorrelation function algorithm that were generally used to analyze the chaotic characteristics of sampled signals. From these results, we could find the fact that the performance of our proposed algorithms relied mainly on the geometrical property such as an area of the reconstructed phase portrait. For the real application, we applied our algorithm for designing a small cardiac event recorder. This system was to record patients\' ECG and R-R intervals for 1 h to investigate HRV characteristics of the patients who had vasovagal syncope symptom and for the evaluation, we implemented our algorithm in C language and applied to MIT/BIH arrhythmia database of 48 subjects. Our proposed algorithm achieved a 99.58% detection rate of QRS complexes.