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Wavelet-based Encoding Scheme for Controlling Size of Compressed ECG Segments in Telecardiology Systems

  • Mobile & Wireless Health
  • Published:
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Abstract

One of the major issues in time-critical medical applications using wireless technology is the size of the payload packet, which is generally designed to be very small to improve the transmission process. Using small packets to transmit continuous ECG data is still costly. Thus, data compression is commonly used to reduce the huge amount of ECG data transmitted through telecardiology devices. In this paper, a new ECG compression scheme is introduced to ensure that the compressed ECG segments fit into the available limited payload packets, while maintaining a fixed CR to preserve the diagnostic information. The scheme automatically divides the ECG block into segments, while maintaining other compression parameters fixed. This scheme adopts discrete wavelet transform (DWT) method to decompose the ECG data, bit-field preserving (BFP) method to preserve the quality of the DWT coefficients, and a modified running-length encoding (RLE) scheme to encode the coefficients. The proposed dynamic compression scheme showed promising results with a percentage packet reduction (PR) of about 85.39% at low percentage root-mean square difference (PRD) values, less than 1%. ECG records from MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database were used to test the proposed method. The simulation results showed promising performance that satisfies the needs of portable telecardiology systems, like the limited payload size and low power consumption.

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Acknowledgements

Authors would like to express sincere appreciation to Qatar National Research Fund ”NPRP Grant #4-1207-2-474“. The in-kind support of Sultan Qaboos University is also acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Al-Khoudh, Muscat, 123, Oman

    Asiya M. Al-Busaidi & Lazhar Khriji

  2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, 2713, Qatar

    Farid Touati

  3. Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Wireless and Photonics Network Research Center, University of Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia

    Mohd Fadlee Rasid

  4. School of Engineering, Applied Science and Technology, Canadian University of Dubai, Dubai, P.O. Box. 117781, United Arab Emirates

    Adel Ben Mnaouer

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  1. Asiya M. Al-Busaidi
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  2. Lazhar Khriji
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Correspondence to Asiya M. Al-Busaidi.

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Al-Busaidi, A.M., Khriji, L., Touati, F. et al. Wavelet-based Encoding Scheme for Controlling Size of Compressed ECG Segments in Telecardiology Systems. J Med Syst 41, 166 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-017-0817-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-017-0817-1

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