Fast Internet transmission of physiological signals using the lifting scheme and SPIHT coding algorithm

With the development of the information highway, the Internet is rapidly reaching major medical centers, peripheral hospitals and clinics, and the homes of physicians and patients. This connection provides a unique opportunity to transmit physiological data through the Internet for diagnosis, monitoring, and analysis by dedicated computers connected to the Internet. The efficient transmission of this type of data has become a significant problem. In this paper we present a multiresolution approach based on a powerful combination of the lifting scheme and the SPIHT coding algorithm. This approach enables the rate of transmission to be adapted to the receiving device so that the unnecessary portion of the data is never sent. It also allows a lossless transmission, and is capable of reconstructing essential waveforms of the data even when the network halts after a certain period of transmission.