High Performance Method for Electrocardiogram Compression Using Two Dimensional Multiwavelet Transform

In this paper, we introduce an effective ECG compression algorithm based on two dimensional multiwavelet transform. The SPIHT algorithm has achieved prominent success in signal compression. Multiwavelets offer simultaneous orthogonality, symmetry, and short support, which is not possible with scalar two-channel wavelet systems. These features are known to be important in signal processing. Therefore multiwavelet offers the possibility of superior performance for image processing applications. This paper deals with beat variation periods and then exploits the correlation between cycles (inter-beat) and the correlation within each ECG cycle (intra-beat). We suggested applying the SPIHT algorithm to 2-D multiwavelet transform of ECG signals. Experiments on selected records of ECG from MIT-BIH arrhythmia database revealed that the proposed algorithm is significantly more efficient for compression in comparison with previously proposed ECG compression schemes