ECG signal compression with a new wavelet method

A wavelet electrocardiogram (ECG) signal encoder/decoder (codec) based on the set partitioning in hierarchical trees (SPIHT) compression algorithm is proposed. Experiments on selected records from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database reveal that the proposed codec is significantly more efficient in compression and in computation than previously proposed ECG compression schemes. The coder also attains exact bit rate control and generates a bit stream progressive in quality or rate.