Wavelet-based ECG signals compression using SPIHT technique and VKTP coder

In this paper, an efficient Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal compression method based on wavelet transform is presented. The proposed method combines the adapted SPIHT (Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees) method with VKTP (Vector K-Tree Partitioning) coder. The SPIHT method is based on the use of wavelet transform which is very well suited to locate the energy of the signal in fewer coefficients. Using the VKTP algorithm, to encode the generated bit stream of SPIHT algorithm, we achieve high compression performances. The tests of this lossy compression/ decompression technique are performed on many ECG records from Arrhythmia Database. The obtained results illustrate the capabilities of the proposed approach to improve the compression ratio while maintaining a good signal quality.