ECG DATA-COMPRESSION VIA CUBIC-SPLINES AND SCAN-ALONG POLYGONAL-APPROXIMATION

A new electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression method (CUSAPA) is pres ented in this paper. It applies the scan-along polygonal approximation (SAPA) algorithm on the QRS complex of the ECG waveform and the cubic -splines approximation to the S-Q segment. This method requires a QRS detector as preprocessor to filter out the QRS complex portions. An at tribute grammar is developed to locate the best initial spline knot lo cations which will represent the S-Q segment. With an overall compress ion ratio greater than four, the quality of the reconstructed signal i s well suited for morphological studies when compared to some other te chniques (FFT, FOI and SAPA). The proposed algorithm has shown a signi ficant 50 Hz baseline noise reduction. Extensive computer results obta ined with an ECG database have demonstrated the efficiency of the prop osed algorithm.