Wavelet-based ECG data compression system with linear quality control scheme

Maintaining reconstructed signals at a desired level of quality is crucial for lossy ECG data compression. Wavelet-based approaches using a recursive decomposition process are unsuitable for real-time ECG signal recoding and commonly obtain a nonlinear compression performance with distortion sensitive to quantization error. The sensitive response is caused without compromising the influences of word-length-growth (WLG) effect and unfavorable for the reconstruction quality control of ECG data compression. In this paper, the 1-D reversible round-off nonrecursive discrete periodic wavelet transform is applied to overcome the WLG magnification effect in terms of the mechanisms of error propagation resistance and significant normalization of octave coefficients. The two mechanisms enable the design of a multivariable quantization scheme that can obtain a compression performance with the approximate characteristics of linear distortion. The quantization scheme can be controlled with a single control variable. Based on the linear compression performance, a linear quantization scale prediction model is presented for guaranteeing reconstruction quality. Following the use of the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database, the experimental results show that the proposed system, with lower computational complexity, can obtain much better reconstruction quality control than other wavelet-based methods.