Quality-Controlled ECG Data Compression and Classification for Cardiac Healthcare Devices

Abstract

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are widely used by cardiologists for the early detection of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). In the early detection of CVDs, long-term ECG data is used for analysis. Healthcare devices used for the acquisition of long-term ECG data require an efficient ECG data compression algorithm. But compression of ECG signal with maintaining its quality is a challenge. Hence, this chapter presents a quality-controlled compression method that compresses the ECG data efficiently with retaining its quality up to a certain mark. For this, a distortion measure is used with specifying its value in a tolerable range. The compression performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated using ECG records of the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. In performance assessment, it is found that the compression algorithm performs well. The compressed ECG data are also used for normal and arrhythmia beat classification. The classification performance for ECG beats obtained from the compressed ECG data is good. It denotes the better diagnostic quality of the compressed ECG data.