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ECG Database Applications Guide

Ninth Edition
21 May 1997



George B. Moody
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Biomedical Engineering Center

Copyright ©1980-1997 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For information on obtaining the most recent versions of the programs described in this guide, visit our web site, or write to:

MIT-BIH Database Distribution
MIT Room 20A-113
Cambridge, MA 02139
USA

A PostScript version of this guide is available. The latest version can be downloaded from MIT. Printed copies of this guide are available for $10 each (including shipping by surface mail) by writing to the address above. Please make checks payable to ``Beth Israel Hospital Biomedical Engineering Division.''

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this guide provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this guide under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this guide into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions.

Contents

Applications

• a2m, ad2m, m2a, md2a: utilities for converting between MIT and AHA DB formats
• bxb: ANSI/AAMI-standard beat-by-beat annotation comparator
• calibrate: calibrate signals of a DB record
• coherence: estimate coherence and cross-spectrum of two time series
• dbcollate: collate DB records into a multi-segment record
• dbdesc: read signal specifications
• dbplot: plot DB signals and annotations
• dbtool: DB browser for SunView
• dbwhich: find a DB file and print its pathname
• ecgeval: generate and run ECG analyzer evaluation script
• epic: ANSI/AAMI-standard episode-by-episode annotation comparator
• fft: fast Fourier transform
• fir: general-purpose FIR filter for DB records
• hrfft, hrlomb, hrmem, hrplot: calculate and plot heart rate power spectra
• ihr: calculate instantaneous heart rate
• log10: calculate common logarithms of two-column data
• lomb: estimate power spectrum using the Lomb periodogram method
• memse: estimate power spectrum using the maximum entropy (all poles) method
• mfilt: general-purpose median filter for DB records
• mrgann: merge annotation files
• mxm: ANSI/AAMI-standard measurement-by-measurement comparator
• nst: noise stress test for ECG analysis programs
• plot2d, plot3d: make 2-D or 3-D plots from text files of data, using gnuplot
• plotstm: produce scatter plot of ST measurement errors on a PostScript device
• pschart: produce annotated `chart recordings' on a PostScript device
• psfd: produce annotated `full disclosure' plots on a PostScript device
• rdann: read a DB annotation file
• rdsamp: read DB signal files
• rxr: ANSI/AAMI-standard run-by-run annotation comparator
• sample: digitize and replay analog signals (MS-DOS only)
• setdb, cshsetdb, dossetdb: set DB environment variables
• sigamp: measure signal amplitudes of a DB record
• skewedit: edit skew fields of header file(s)
• snip: copy an excerpt of a DB record
• sortann: rearrange annotations in canonical order
• sqrs: single-channel QRS detector
• sumann: summarize the contents of a DB annotation file
• sumstats: derive aggregate statistics from bxb, rxr, etc., line-format output
• tach: heart rate tachometer
• view, vsetup: DB browser for MS-DOS
• wave: waveform analyzer, viewer, and editor for the X Window System
• wrann: write a DB annotation file
• wrsamp: write DB signal files
• wview: DB browser for MS Windows
• xform: sampling frequency, amplitude, and format conversion for DB records

Functions

• db: ECG database library

File formats

• annot: ECG database annotation file format
• dbcal: ECG database calibration file format
• header: ECG database header file format
• signal: ECG database signal file format

Appendices

• Installing the DB Software Package
• Evaluating ECG Analyzers

Other links of interest

• The MIT-BIH Database Distribution Home Page
  Information about CD-ROM databases of ECGs and other physiologic signals, and related software. This is the source for the software described in this guide.
• ECG Database Programmer's Guide
  Includes tutorial and reference material relating to the DB library, a portable set of functions (subroutines) for reading and writing files in the formats supported by the applications described here. The DB library may be used with C, C++, or Fortran programs; the guide primarily describes the C interface.
• WAVE User's Guide
  A comprehensive tutorial, with extensive reference material, for WAVE, an interactive waveform browser with facilities for annotation editing and control of external analysis programs. WAVE runs on PCs under the free Linux operating system, and on SPARC-based systems under SunOS or Solaris.