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Experiences in digitizing and digitally measuring a paper-based ECG archive.
Arttu Holkeri1, Antti Eranti2, Tuomas V Kenttä3
1Division of Cardiology, Heart and Lung Center, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Meilahti Tower Hospital, PL 340, Helsinki, HUS, Finland.
Journal of Electrocardiology
|October 17, 2017
Summary
A new method accurately digitizes and measures paper electrocardiograms (ECG), enabling efficient storage and analysis. This digital conversion process shows good agreement with manual measurements for key ECG intervals.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Medical Informatics
Background:
- No standardized method exists for digitizing and digitally measuring paper electrocardiograms (ECG).
- This study addresses the need for a reliable process to convert historical paper ECG data into a digital format.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe and validate a novel process for digitizing and digitally measuring paper ECGs.
- To assess the comparability of the new digital measurement method against traditional manual measurements.
Main Methods:
- A cohort of 7203 participants' paper ECGs (1978-1980) were digitized using the ECG Trace Tool software.
- Digital measurements were performed using EASE software, with a subset of 100 ECGs manually measured for comparison.
Main Results:
- The digital (EASE) and manual measurements demonstrated good agreement across key intervals.
- Mean differences were 1.4ms for PR interval, -1.0ms for QRS duration, and 11.6ms for QT interval.
- Amplitude differences between methods ranged from -0.03mV to 0.01mV.
Conclusions:
- The developed paper-to-digital conversion and measurement process is accurate and reliable.
- This method facilitates efficient storage and analysis of historical paper ECG data.
- The findings support the adoption of this digital approach for managing legacy ECG records.