An efficient instantaneous ecg delineation algorithm

Abstract

An efficient electrocardiogram (ECG) delineation algorithm is proposed to instantaneously delineate the ECG characteristic points, such as peak, onset and offset points of QRS, P and T waves. It is essential to delineate the ECG characteristic waves accurately and precisely as it ensure the performance of ECG analysis and diagnosis. The proposed delineation algorithm is based on discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and moving window average (MWA) techniques. The proposed delineation algorithm is evaluated and assessed with the annotation data of QT database in term of accuracy, sensitivity and positive predictive value. With the only available 13 sets QT database records with modified Lead II data, the proposed algorithm achieved significant P peak, R peak, T peak and T offset delineation performance with the accuracy of 95.34%, 99.80%, 90.82% and 86.33% respectively when evaluated with q1c annotation file. The mean difference between detected and annotated T offset based on q1c and q2c is 13 ms and 3.6 ms respectively. The delineation of 15 minute-long ECG record only required 74.702 second. As conclusion, the proposed ECG delineation algorithm based on DWT and MWA techniques have been proven simple, efficient and accurate in delineating the significant ECG characteristic points.