ECG compression with retrieved quality guaranteed

Abstract

A filter bank-based algorithm for ECG compression is developed. The proposed method utilises a nearly-perfect reconstruction cosine modulated filter bank to split the incoming signals into several subband signals that are then quantised through thresholding and Huffman encoded. The advantage of the proposed method is that the threshold is chosen so that the quality of the retrieved signal is guaranteed. It is shown that the compression ratio achieved is an improvement over those obtained by previously reported thresholding-based algorithms.