A combined application of lossless and lossy compression in ECG processing and transmission via GSM-based SMS

Abstract

This paper presents a software-based scheme for reliable and robust Electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression and its efficient transmission using Second Generation (2G) Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) based Short Message Service (SMS). To achieve a firm lossless compression in high standard deviating QRS complex regions and an acceptable lossy compression in the rest of the signal, two different algorithms have been used. The combined compression module is such that it outputs only American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) characters and, hence, SMS service is found to be most suitable for transmitting the compressed signal. At the receiving end, the ECG signal is reconstructed using just the reverse algorithm. The module has been tested to all the 12 leads of different types of ECG signals (healthy and abnormal) collected from the PTB Diagnostic ECG Database. The compression algorithm achieves an average compression ratio of ∼22.51, without any major alteration of clinical morphology.

• ASCII character
• grouping
• GSM transmitter
• SMS
• standard deviation

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge their cordial gratefulness to Dr Suranjan Bhattacharya, MBBS (Calcutta), Dr R. C. Saha, MBBS Dip Card, Dr Umapada Das, MBBS MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Medical Education Service and Dr Soumya Chatterjee, MBBS MD, Kolkata, India, for their valuable clinical advice throughout the research work.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. The authors are thankful to TEQIP-Phase II, University College of Technology, University of Calcutta for providing financial assistance.