Accurate and reliable 3-lead to 12-lead ECG reconstruction methodology for remote health monitoring applications

Abstract

Remote areas, generally, encounter scarcity of cardiologists and state-of-the-art facilities for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). However, aforementioned constraints can be addressed using recent advancements in wireless technology and its omnipresence. Clinical CVD diagnosis is, generally, carried out using either of Standard 12-Lead (S12) or Mason–Likar 12-Lead (ML12) system. These systems consist of 8 independent leads/signals which restrict their usage in telemonitoring applications viz. personalized remote health monitoring, home monitoring etc., due to high bandwidth and storage requirements, data transmission time and low compression ratio (CR) from signal compression techniques. Moreover, the reduced lead (RL) systems with 2–3 leads, generally, employed in telemonitoring applications might not be sufficient for diagnosis. We form a Reduced 3-Lead system from S12 and ML12 systems at the transmission end which reduces the number of signals to 3 and then reconstruct the S12 and ML12 systems at the receiver end using our proposed personalized reconstruction methodology, thus allaying aforementioned limitations. I, II and V2 form the basis leads and the precordial leads form the target leads. Least square fit and heart vector projection theory have been used to obtain personalized transformation coefficients. Accuracy of reconstruction has been evaluated on PhysioNet PTBDB and INCARTDB, after wavelet based preprocessing, using R2 statistics, correlation (rx) and regression (bx) coefficients. Re-usability of personalized coefficients has also been investigated in this paper. Mean R2 values obtained from the reconstruction of target leads are 91.87% (PTBDB) 83.75% (INCARTDB). R3L system reduces the number of leads/signals from 8 to 3 and as the results indicate the possibility of re-using the transformation coefficients, the number of electrodes can be reduced from 10 to 5, thereby, increasing the comfort of patients and caregivers.