Optimal Coding of Vectorcardiographic Sequences Using Spatial Prediction

This paper discusses principles, implementation details, and advantages of sequence coding algorithm applied to the compression of vectocardiograms (VCG). The main novelty of the proposed method is the automatic management of distortion distribution controlled by the local signal contents in both technical and medical aspects. As in clinical practice, the VCG loops representing P, QRS, and T waves in the three-dimensional (3-D) space are considered here as three simultaneous sequences of objects. Because of the similarity of neighboring loops, encoding the values of prediction error significantly reduces the data set volume. The residual values are de-correlated with the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and truncated at certain energy threshold. The presented method is based on the irregular temporal distribution of medical data in the signal and takes advantage of variable sampling frequency for automatically detected VCG loops. The features of the proposed algorithm are confirmed by the results of the numerical experiment carried out for a wide range of real records. The average data reduction ratio reaches a value of 8.15 while the percent root-mean-square difference (PRD) distortion ratio for the most important sections of signal does not exceed 1.1%