ECG data compression

There is considerable commercial interest in developing an efficient method of compressing ECG data. Let's take an example: in a typical clinical setting, a single channel of ECG data will provide 250 samples per second of 12-bit coded data, leading to 32.4 Mbytes of binary data per day per channel. Typically, two or three ECG leads (even more in certain clinical situations) will be recorded. What's more, a cardiac care unit has many beds, all connected to a single central monitoring station. This leads to a quantity of data accumulated in a central monitor that can be on the order of tens of gigabytes per day. Some of this data needs to be archived for years.

The other example is that of ambulatory patients fitted with...