Finite rate of innovation based modeling and compression of ECG signals

Mobile health is gaining increasing importance for society and the quest for new power efficient devices sampling biosignals is becoming critical. We discuss a new scheme called Variable Pulse Width Finite Rate of Innovation (VPW-FRI) to model and compress ECG signals. This technique generalizes classical FRI estimation to enable the use of a sum of asymmetric Cauchy-based pulses for modeling electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. We experimentally show that VPW-FRI indeed models ECG signals with increased accuracy compared to current standards. In addition, we study the compression efficiency of the method: compared with various widely used compression schemes, we showcase improvements in terms of compression efficiency as well as sampling rate.