A new simple and efficient technique for ECG compression based on leads converter and DWT coefficients thresholding

In this paper, a new scheme for ElectroCardioGram (ECG) signal compression is proposed. The idea behind this efficient scheme is simple. Primary, the redundancies between the six leads represented in frontal plane (D_I to aV_F) was exploited to perform only 2 leads using a converting method; in this step, the scheme provided a near lossless Compression Ratio (CR) up to 3:1. Secondly, to increase the CR, we have used the recent powerful Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) signal processing combined to its thresholded coefficients and Adaptive Decimal to Binary Converter (ADBC). Experiments are carried out on the selected records from the PTB Arrhythmia Database and obtained an average Percent Root mean squared Difference (PRD) as around 0.59% to 16.38% for an average CR of 4.96:1 to 130.34:1 respectively. The results indicate that this technique can be applied without altering a real morphology ECG signals and it applies to all types of ECG signals, whether normal or presenting arrhythmias.