Lossless ECG encoding

Signal Acquisition-Independent Lossless Electrocardiogram Compression Using Adaptive Linear Prediction

In this paper, we propose a lossless electrocardiogram (ECG) compression method using a prediction error-based adaptive linear prediction technique. This method combines the adaptive linear prediction, which minimizes the prediction error in the ECG signal prediction, and the modified Golomb-Rice coding, which encodes the prediction error to the binary code as the compressed data. We used the PTB Diagnostic ECG database, the European ST-T database, and the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database for the evaluation and achieved the average compression ratios for single-lead ECG signals of 3.16, 3.75, and 3.52, respectively, despite different signal acquisition setup in each database. As the prediction order is very crucial for this particular problem, we also investigate the validity of the popular linear prediction coefficients that are generally used in ECG compression by determining the prediction coefficients from the three databases using the autocorrelation method. The findings are in agreement with the previous works in that the second-order linear prediction is suitable for the ECG compression application.

A Real Time and Lossless Encoding Scheme for Patch Electrocardiogram Monitors

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. Due to advancements facilitating the integration of electric and adhesive technologies, long-term patch electrocardiogram (ECG) monitors (PEMs) are currently used to conduct daily continuous cardiac function assessments. This paper presents an ECG encoding scheme for joint lossless data compression and heartbeat detection to minimize the circuit footprint size and power consumption of a PEM. The proposed encoding scheme supports two operation modes: fixed-block mode and dynamic-block mode. Both modes compress ECG data losslessly, but only dynamic-block mode supports the heartbeat detection feature. The whole encoding scheme was implemented on a C-platform and tested with ECG data from MIT/BIH arrhythmia databases. A compression ratio of 2.1 could be achieved with a normal heartbeat. Dynamic-block mode provides heartbeat detection accuracy at a rate higher than 98%. Fixed-block mode was also implemented on the field-programmable gate array, and could be used as a chip for using analog-to-digital convertor-ready signals as an operation clock.

A Novel Blaschke Unwinding Adaptive-Fourier-Decomposition-Based Signal Compression Algorithm With Application on ECG Signals

This paper presents a novel signal compression algorithm based on the Blaschke unwinding adaptive Fourier decomposition (AFD). The Blaschke unwinding AFD is a newly developed signal decomposition theory. It utilizes the Nevanlinna factorization and the maximal selection principle in each decomposition step, and achieves a faster convergence rate with higher fidelity. The proposed compression algorithm is applied to the electrocardiogram signal. To assess the performance of the proposed compression algorithm, in addition to the generic assessment criteria, we consider the less discussed criteria related to the clinical needs-for the heart rate variability analysis purpose, how accurate the R-peak information is preserved is evaluated. The experiments are conducted on the MIT-BIH arrhythmia benchmark database. The results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than other state-of-the-art approaches. Meanwhile, it also well preserves the R-peak information.

SVD and ASCII Character Encoding-Based Compression of Multiple Biosignals for Remote Healthcare Systems

Advancements in electronics and miniaturized device fabrication technologies have enabled simultaneous acquisition of multiple biosignals (MBioSigs), but the area of compression of MBioSigs remains unexplored to date. This paper presents a robust singular value decomposition (SVD) and American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) character encoding-based algorithm for compression of MBioSigs for the first time to the best of our knowledge. At the preprocessing stage, MBioSigs are denoised, down sampled and then transformed to a two-dimensional (2-D) data array. SVD of the 2-D array is carried out and the dimensionality of the singular values is reduced. The resulting matrix is then compressed by a lossless ASCII character encoding-based technique. The proposed compression algorithm can be used in a variety of modes such as lossless, with or without using the down sampling operation. The compressed file is then uploaded to a hypertext preprocessor (PHP)-based website for remote monitoring application. Evaluation results show that the proposed algorithm provides a good compression performance; in particular, the mean opinion score of the reconstructed signal falls under the category "very good" as per the gold standard subjective measure.

A joint application of optimal threshold based discrete cosine transform and ASCII encoding for ECG data compression with its inherent encryption

In this paper, a joint use of the discrete cosine transform (DCT), and differential pulse code modulation (DPCM) based quantization is presented for predefined quality controlled electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression. The formulated approach exploits the energy compaction property in transformed domain. The DPCM quantization has been applied to zero-sequence grouped DCT coefficients that were optimally thresholded via Regula-Falsi method. The generated sequence is encoded using Huffman coding. This encoded series is further converted to a valid ASCII code using the standard codebook for transmission purpose. Such a coded series possesses inherent encryption capability. The proposed technique is validated on all 48 records of standard MIT-BIH database using different measures for compression and encryption. The acquisition time has been taken in accordance to that existed in literature for the fair comparison with contemporary state-of-art approaches. The chosen measures are (1) compression ratio (CR), (2) percent root mean square difference (PRD), (3) percent root mean square difference without base (PRD1), (4) percent root mean square difference normalized (PRDN), (5) root mean square (RMS) error, (6) signal to noise ratio (SNR), (7) quality score (QS), (8) entropy, (9) Entropy score (ES) and (10) correlation coefficient (r _x,y ). Prominently the average values of CR, PRD and QS were equal to 18.03, 1.06, and 17.57 respectively. Similarly, the mean encryption metrics i.e. entropy, ES and r _x,y were 7.9692, 0.9962 and 0.0113 respectively. The novelty in combining the approaches is well justified by the values of these metrics that are significantly higher than the comparison counterparts.

Efficient Sequential Compression of Multichannel Biomedical Signals

This paper proposes lossless and near-lossless compression algorithms for multichannel biomedical signals. The algorithms are sequential and efficient, which makes them suitable for low-latency and low-power signal transmission applications. We make use of information theory and signal processing tools (such as universal coding, universal prediction, and fast online implementations of multivariate recursive least squares), combined with simple methods to exploit spatial as well as temporal redundancies typically present in biomedical signals. The algorithms are tested with publicly available electroencephalogram and electrocardiogram databases, surpassing in all cases the current state of the art in near-lossless and lossless compression ratios.

A combined application of lossless and lossy compression in ECG processing and transmission via GSM-based SMS

This paper presents a software-based scheme for reliable and robust Electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression and its efficient transmission using Second Generation (2G) Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) based Short Message Service (SMS). To achieve a firm lossless compression in high standard deviating QRS complex regions and an acceptable lossy compression in the rest of the signal, two different algorithms have been used. The combined compression module is such that it outputs only American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters and, hence, SMS service is found to be most suitable for transmitting the compressed signal. At the receiving end, the ECG signal is reconstructed using just the reverse algorithm. The module has been tested to all the 12 leads of different types of ECG signals (healthy and abnormal) collected from the PTB Diagnostic ECG Database. The compression algorithm achieves an average compression ratio of ∼22.51, without any major alteration of clinical morphology.

A lossless multichannel bio-signal compression based on low-complexity joint coding scheme for portable medical devices

Research on real-time health systems have received great attention during recent years and the needs of high-quality personal multichannel medical signal compression for personal medical product applications are increasing. The international MPEG-4 audio lossless coding (ALS) standard supports a joint channel-coding scheme for improving compression performance of multichannel signals and it is very efficient compression method for multi-channel biosignals. However, the computational complexity of such a multichannel coding scheme is significantly greater than that of other lossless audio encoders. In this paper, we present a multichannel hardware encoder based on a low-complexity joint-coding technique and shared multiplier scheme for portable devices. A joint-coding decision method and a reference channel selection scheme are modified for a low-complexity joint coder. The proposed joint coding decision method determines the optimized joint-coding operation based on the relationship between the cross correlation of residual signals and the compression ratio. The reference channel selection is designed to select a channel for the entropy coding of the joint coding. The hardware encoder operates at a 40 MHz clock frequency and supports two-channel parallel encoding for the multichannel monitoring system. Experimental results show that the compression ratio increases by 0.06%, whereas the computational complexity decreases by 20.72% compared to the MPEG-4 ALS reference software encoder. In addition, the compression ratio increases by about 11.92%, compared to the single channel based bio-signal lossless data compressor.

A joint QRS detection and data compression scheme for wearable sensors

This paper presents a novel electrocardiogram (ECG) processing technique for joint data compression and QRS detection in a wireless wearable sensor. The proposed algorithm is aimed at lowering the average complexity per task by sharing the computational load among multiple essential signal-processing tasks needed for wearable devices. The compression algorithm, which is based on an adaptive linear data prediction scheme, achieves a lossless bit compression ratio of 2.286x. The QRS detection algorithm achieves a sensitivity (Se) of 99.64% and positive prediction (+P) of 99.81% when tested with the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia database. Lower overall complexity and good performance renders the proposed technique suitable for wearable/ambulatory ECG devices.

Scalable ECG Compression for Long-Term Home Health Care

Most current Holter devices monitor the ECG for 24 to 72 hours. However, for the accurate diagnosis of many cardiac diseases, especially for the wide variety of asymptomatic cases, continuous ECG monitoring for weeks or even months may be required. In this paper, we focus on the issue of ECG compression during long-term monitoring of the patient. The patient may be at home, at work, or even on a trip. A scalable compression scheme is proposed which ensures optimal signal quality given the limited physical storage on the wearable device. When necessary, the signal quality is progressively and gently degraded in order to adapt to environmental and the patient's conditions. Details of the proposed scheme are described and sample results are presented.

Time division multiplexing based method for compressing ECG signals: application for normal and abnormal cases

The proposed ECG compression method combines three major approaches based on time division multiplexing (TDM) and multilevel wavelet decomposition followed by parametrical modelling. Before applying these techniques, a pre-processing step is required, which consists of detecting and aligning different beats. Even though this compression method is regarded as a lossy method, we will show how a high compression ratio (CR) can be achieved by preserving the major medical information within the ECG. Several normal and abnormal signals from various databases are used to evaluate the performance of the proposed technique.

ECG signal compression based on Burrows-Wheeler transformation and inversion ranks of linear prediction

Many transform-based compression techniques, such as Fourier, Walsh, Karhunen-Loeve (KL), wavelet, and discrete cosine transform (DCT), have been investigated and devised for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal compression. However, the recently introduced Burrows-Wheeler Transformation has not been completely investigated. In this paper, we investigate the lossless compression of ECG signals. We show that when compressing ECG signals, utilization of linear prediction, Burrows-Wheeler Transformation, and inversion ranks yield better compression gain in terms of weighted average bit per sample than recently proposed ECG-specific coders. Not only does our proposed technique yield better compression than ECG-specific compressors, it also has a major advantage: with a small modification, the proposed technique may be used as a universal coder.

Wavelet-based lossy-to-lossless ECG compression in a unified vector quantization framework

In a prior work, a wavelet-based vector quantization (VQ) approach was proposed to perform lossy compression of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. In this paper, we investigate and fix its coding inefficiency problem in lossless compression and extend it to allow both lossy and lossless compression in a unified coding framework. The well-known 9/7 filters and 5/3 integer filters are used to implement the wavelet transform (WT) for lossy and lossless compression, respectively. The codebook updating mechanism, originally designed for lossy compression, is modified to allow lossless compression as well. In addition, a new and cost-effective coding strategy is proposed to enhance the coding efficiency of set partitioning in hierarchical tree (SPIHT) at the less significant bit representation of a WT coefficient. ECG records from the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia and European ST-T Databases are selected as test data. In terms of the coding efficiency for lossless compression, experimental results show that the proposed codec improves the direct SPIHT approach and the prior work by about 33% and 26%, respectively.

Influence of lossy compression on eye movement signals

Eye movements considered in our research are physiological signals that are measured in otoneurological balance tests. They are also investigated in other areas of medicine and in psychology. When great amounts of signals are measured in clinical and research work, signal compression is of great use in storing measurements for later investigations. In this research we assessed the influence of lossy compression on medically interesting parameter values that are computed from eye movement signals. We found that high compression ratios with bit rates lower than 1.5 bits per sample on signals with an original resolution of 13 bits per sample produced results without significant changes to the medical parameters values.

Lossy compression of eye movement and auditory brainstem response signals

Eye movement and auditory brainstem response signals recorded for balance and hearing investigations were used as a medical test battery for several types of lossy compression techniques. These signals are associated with the function of the ears. The former signals are used to assess the balance problems (especially vertigo) of a subject and the latter his or her hearing problems. New technique is also presented based on successive approximation quantization. The effect of information loss on medical parameters computed from the signals in the course of compression was evaluated for brainstem response signals. It is important to ensure that lossy compression techniques of these biomedical signals do not impair medical parameter values computed from the signals.

Using contexts and R-R interval estimation in lossless ECG compression

The paper presents a new lossless ECG compression scheme. The short-term predictor and the coder use conditioning on a small number of contexts. The long-term prediction is based on an algorithm for R-R interval estimation. Several QRS detection algorithms are investigated to select a low complexity and reliable detection algorithm. The coding of prediction residuals uses primarily the Golomb-Rice (GR) codes, but, to improve the coding results, escape codes GR-ESC are used in some contexts for a limited number of samples. Experimental results indicate the good overall performance of the lossless ECG compression algorithms (reducing the storage needs from 12 to about 3-4 bits per sample). The scheme consistently outperforms other waveform or general purpose coding algorithms.

Compression of ECG signals by optimized quantization of discrete cosine transform coefficients

This paper presents an ECG compressor based on optimized quantization of Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients. The ECG to be compressed is partitioned in blocks of fixed size, and each DCT block is quantized using a quantization vector and a threshold vector that are specifically defined for each signal. These vectors are defined, via Lagrange multipliers, so that the estimated entropy is minimized for a given distortion in the reconstructed signal. The optimization method presented in this paper is an adaptation for ECG of a technique previously used for image compression. In the last step of the compressor here proposed, the quantized coefficients are coded by an arithmetic coder. The Percent Root-Mean-Square Difference (PRD) was adopted as a measure of the distortion introduced by the compressor. To assess the performance of the proposed compressor, 2-minute sections of all 96 records of the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database were compressed at different PRD values, and the corresponding compression ratios were computed. We also present traces of test signals before and after the compression/decompression process. The results show that the proposed method achieves good compression ratios (CR) with excellent reconstruction quality. An average CR of 9.3:1 is achieved for PRD equal to 2.5%. Experiments with ECG records used in other results from the literature revealed that the proposed method compares favorably with various classical and state-of-the-art ECG compressors.