Compression of electrocardiograph signals

• US 8,606,351 B2
• Filed: 12/28/2011
• Issued: 12/10/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 12/28/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Wheeler, Frederick Wilson
• Primary Examiner(s): MANUEL, GEORGE C
• Application Number:
  US13/339,277
• Publication Number:
  US 20130172763A1
• Time in Patent Office: 713 Days
• Field of Search: 600/509
• US Class Current: 600/509
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0006 ECG or EEG signals
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/318 Heart-related electrical modalities, e.g. electrocardiography [ECG]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7221 Determining signal validity, reliability or quality A61B5/7207 and A61B5/7217 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7232 involving compression of the physiological signal, e.g. to extend the signal recording period

Abstract

A generally lossless compression system suitable for compression of data in a real-time, remote monitoring application is disclosed. In one embodiment, the real-time monitoring application is subject to a fixed-delay transmission constraint. In one implementation, a specific set partitioning method (e.g., binary tree partitioning) is employed on blocks of data that are wavelet transformed in a reversible manner so that encoded blocks may be transmitted losslessly or truncated and transmitted with some loss.

Claims

1. A method for compressing an electrocardiograph (ECG) data input acquired by an ECG system, comprising:

receiving one or more ECG inputs via a data acqusition component of the ECG system;

on a data processing component of the ECG system, processing the ECG inputs to generate a series of blocks;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a forward wavelet transform to the blocks to generate a set of wavelet coefficients;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a compression algorithm to the wavelet coefficients to generate a plurality of blocks of compressed data;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, truncating compressed blocks of data that are too large to be written to an output buffer of the ECG system; and

writing the plurality of blocks of compressed data to the output buffer of the ECG system for subsequent transmission by a transmission component of the ECG system.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the series of blocks are staggered over time.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the compression algorithm comprises a binary tree partitioning algorithm.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the binary tree partitioning algorithm is implemented using an integer lifting-based algorithm.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein applying the compression algorithm to the wavelet coefficients to generate the set of compressed data comprises applying a binary tree partitioning algorithm to a plurality of blocks of wavelet coefficients to generate a plurality of respective variable length bitstreams.

6. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media provided as a storage component of an electrocadiograph (ECG) system, the storeage component encoding one or processor-executable routines, wherein the one or more routines, when executed by a data processing component of the ECG system, cause acts to be performed comprising:

receiving one or more ECG inputs via a data acqusition component of the ECG system;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, processing the ECG inputs to generate a series of blocks;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a forward wavelet transform to the blocks to generate a set of wavelet coefficients;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a compression algorithm to the wavelet coefficients to generate a plurality of blocks of compressed data;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, truncating compressed blocks of data that are too large to be written to an output buffer of the ECG system; and

writing the plurality of blocks of compressed data to the output buffer of the ECG system for subsequent transmission by a transmission component of the ECG system.

7. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 6, wherein the compression algorithm comprises a binary tree partitioning algorithm.

8. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 7, wherein the binary tree partitioning algorithm is implemented using an integer lifting-based algorithm.

9. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 6, wherein applying the compression algorithm to the wavelet coefficients to generate the set of compressed data comprises applying a binary tree partitioning algorithm to a plurality of blocks of wavelet coefficients to generate a plurality of respective variable length bitstreams.

10. A method for compressing electrocardiograph (ECG) data, comprising:

receiving one or more ECG inputs via a data acqusition component of the ECG system;

on a data processing component of the ECG system, processing the inputs to generate a series of blocks;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a forward wavelet transform to the blocks to generate a set of wavelet coefficients;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a binary tree partitioning compression algorithm to the wavelet coefficients to generate a plurality of blocks of compressed data; and

writing the compressed data to a buffer of the ECG system without truncation for subsequent transmission by a transmission component of the ECG system.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the forward wavelet transform is implemented using a lifting algorithm.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the series of blocks are staggered over time.

13. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media provided as a storage component of an electrocadiograph (ECG) system, the storeage component encoding one or processor-executable routines, wherein the one or more routines, when executed by a data processing component of the ECG system, cause acts to be performed comprising:

receiving one or more ECG inputs via a data acqusition component of the ECG system;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, processing the inputs to generate a series of blocks;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a forward wavelet transform to the blocks to generate a set of wavelet coefficients;

on the data processing component of the ECG system, applying a binary tree partitioning compression algorithm to the wavelet coefficients to generate a plurality of blocks of compressed data; and

writing the compressed data to a buffer of the ECG system without truncation for subsequent transmission by a transmission component of the ECG system.

14. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 13, wherein the forward wavelet transform is implemented using a lifting algorithm.