A new electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression method is presented which em
ploys a two dimensional (2-D) transform, This 2-D transform method utilizes
the fact that ECG signals generally show two types of redundancies-between
adjacent heartbeats and between adjacent samples, A heartbeat data sequenc
e is cut and beat-aligned to form a 2-D data array. Any 2-D compression met
hod can then be applied. Transform coding using the 2-D discrete cosine tra
nsform (DCT) [2-D DCT] is employed here as an example, Using selections fro
m the MIT-BIH arrhythmia and Medtronic databases, results are presented tha
t illustrate substantial improvement in compression ratio over one-dimensio
nal methods for comparable percent root-mean-square difference (PRD).