An optimized compression algorithm for real-time ECG data transmission in wireless network of medical information systems

Abstract

Recent medical information systems are striving towards real-time monitoring models to care patients anytime and anywhere through ECG signals. However, there are several limitations such as data distortion and limited bandwidth in wireless communications. In order to overcome such limitations, this research focuses on compression. Few researches have been made to develop a specialized compression algorithm for ECG data transmission in real-time monitoring wireless network. Not only that, recent researches' algorithm is not appropriate for ECG signals. Therefore this paper presents a more developed algorithm EDLZW for efficient ECG data transmission. Results actually showed that the EDLZW compression ratio was 8.66, which was a performance that was 4 times better than any other recent compression method widely used today.