The use of an efficient QRS detection algorithm for the compression of ECG signals with large QRS waves

Recently, the development of storage and transmission technologies and the evolution of information systems, require the handling of large amount of data. Hence, data compression has become essential for both storage and transmission. In this paper, we investigate the influence of an efficient QRS detection technique on the compression quality of a new proposed compression method, in the case of the ECG signals with large QRS waves. The proposed compression method is based on the singular value decomposition and the vector quantization, a compensation technique of the residual reconstruction error is also proposed for the reduction of the reconstruction error. We conducted several tests using arrhythmia database of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Beth Israel Hospital. The obtained results are very satisfactory, whether in the case of ECG signals with wide or narrow QRS waves. A compression ratio of 102.54 was reached for a low reconstruction error.