New Concepts for PVC Detection

A new scheme is proposed for the detection of premature ventricular beats, which is a vital function in rhythm monitoring of cardiac patients. A transformation based on the first difference of the digitized electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is developed for the detection and delineation of QRS complexes. The method for classifying the abnormal complexes from the normal ones is based on the concepts of minimum phase and signal length. The parameters of a linear discriminant function obtained from a training feature vector set are used to classify the complexes. Results of application of the scheme to ECG of two arrhythmia patients are presented.