ECG Acquisition and Management System for Knowledge Discovery in Database: Data Modeling, Design, and Implementation

Today, medical science involves large amounts of heterogeneous data, for example biosignals such as Electrocardiograms (ECG), images and other numerical data. Medical images can easily be collected via Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) and used for Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD). However, no standard has been defined for the collection and management of ECG, and it is not possible to obtain high quality data in sufficient quantities for KDD. Consequently, it was decided to develop an ECG acquisition and management system. This system is based on five modules constituting an integrated system: ECG equipment, acquisition, archiving, viewer and database. The database model was designed to handle both the ECG examination and patients' records, so that raw ECG's and their associated data, such as weight, age, sex, patients' prescriptions and physicians' analyses, could be simultaneously accessed by KDD. The system developed is able to operate independently or be interfaced with Hospital Information System (HIS).