ECG data compression using cut and align beats approach and 2-D transforms

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).