Clinical Quality Guarantee in Real-time ECG Compression

This paper presents a new approach for ECG compression: to set a variable compression threshold to a value equal to the estimated noise in the ECG block. This approach presents several advantages. On the one hand, it solves the problem of where to place the compression threshold so as to obtain a compressed ECG signal preserving all its diagnostic properties. On the other hand, it provides a flexible threshold that is adapted block to block in order to remove noise from the block at the same time it considerably reduces the data to be stored or transmitted, depending on the application where the compression approach is being used. The new approach has been clinically tested using two kind of MOS tests: blind and semi-blind. Clinical evaluation using records from MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database carried out by three expert cardiologists has shown that the compressed signals produced with this compression approach preserves all their clinical diagnostic properties, being rated as very good, the maximum possible score.