CORRELATION DIMENSION ESTIMATION FROM ELECTROCARDIOGRAMS

In this work the correlation dimension (D-2) of electrocardiograms (EC G) has been computed on ECG recordings from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Dat a Base: 28 signals have been studied both analysing changes in D-2 est imations obtained processing different time-slices within the same ECG signal, and comparing the D-2 values computed from different subjects . We observed a greater time variation in the estimated D-2 from patho logical subjects, while D-2 seems to be more repeatable in the case of healthy ones. Instead there is no clear evidence of significative dif ferences in the D-2 values computed from normal and sick subjects. Sin ce the presence of noise affecting the signal induces significant erro rs in D-2 estimates, we proposed the computation of the parameter alph a which gives us a rough information on the noise level.