Direct data compression techniques for ECG signals: effect of sampling frequency on performance

The existing techniques for data compression can be divided into three main groups, namely direct, transformation and parameter extraction methods. The present paper deals with the direct data compression (DDC) methods as applied to ECG data. The performance has been evaluated on the basis of compression ratio, percent-root-mean-square difference and fidelity of the reconstructed signal. Further, in order to know the extent to which the diagnostic information is preserved during compression, peak and boundary measurements have been made both on the reconstructed and original ECG signal and compared. The objective of the present paper is to report the effect of sampling frequency on the aforementioned parameters as studied by the authors. The experimental results show that with the increase in sampling frequency the compression ratio increases and the percent-root-mean-square difference generally decreases. Further, the reconstructed signal is of higher quality having larger bandwidth and higher resolution...