ECG waveform compression by recursive partitioning and decimated residual encoding

A method for high quality, low bit rate compression of ECG waveforms is presented. This method uses a hybrid approach for coding the waveform: higher frequency components are represented as straight-line segments by recursive partitioning (eliminating the requirement of prior knowledge of beat locations), and the remainder of the signal is low-pass filtered, decimated, and encoded using an Adaptive DPCM coder. The reconstructed waveform maintains clinical appearance, while reducing the average bit rate to less than 150 bits per second per channel, as evaluated on a subset of the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database.