ECG signal analysis by pattern comparison

A new technique for the ECG interpretation by waveform recognition is introduced. The basis for the pattern matching algorithm without feature extraction is an ECG waveform database with ECG signals and patient diagnosis information. The recognition takes place by comparing the waveforms of 12 leads of the examined ECG with the same leads of different ECGs from the database. The similarity of the compared ECG beats is calculated with the cross correlation function. By means of the algorithm, we select ECGs of the database which are the most similar to the examined ECG considering all of the individual leads. Using the available database information, the diagnosis which corresponds to the most similar ECGs of the database is then identified as the diagnosis for the examined ECG. The new method has been tested with 249 original ECGs, most of them from patients with myocardial infarction or from healthy persons