Quantitative Investigation of QRS Detection Rules Using the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database

We have investigated the quantitative effects of a number of common elements of QRS detection rules using the MIT/BIH arrhythmia database. A previously developed linear and nonlinear filtering scheme was used to provide input to the QRS detector decision section. We used the filtering to preprocess the database. This yielded a set of event vectors produced from QRS complexes and noise. After this preprocessing, we tested different decision rules on the event vectors. This step was carried out at processing speeds up to 100 times faster than real time. The role of the decision rule section is to discriminate the QRS events from the noise events. We started by optimizing a simple decision rule. Then we developed a progressively more complex decision process for QRS detection by adding new detection rules. We implemented and tested a final real-time QRS detection algorithm, using the optimized decision rule process. The resulting QRS detection algorithm has a sensitivity of 99.69 percent and positive predictivity of 99.77 percent when evaluated with the MIT/BIH arrhythmia database.