ECG Data Coding Using Piecewise Fractal Interpolation

In this paper, we describe an approach to ECG data coding based on a fractal theory of iterated contractive transformations defined piecewise. The main characteristic of this approach is that it relies on the assumption that signal redundancy can be efficiently captured and exploited through piecewise self-transformability on a block-wise basis. The variable range size technique is employed to reduce the reconstruction error. Large ranges are used for encoding the smooth waveform to yield high compression efficiency, and the smaller ranges are used for encoding rapidly varying parts of the signal to preserve the signal quality. The suggested algorithm was evaluated using MIT/BIH arrhythmia database. A high compression ratio is achieved with a relatively low reconstruction error.