Digital electrocardiographs require a sampling rate of at least 500 Hz to maintain accurate frequency response and digitization.
May prompt verification of sampling rates in digital ECG devices; leaves open the clinical impact of suboptimal frequency response on diagnostic accuracy.
This paper reviews the issues that are most important for accurate digitization of an electrocardiogram and conversion back to an analog printout: bandwidth, sampling rate, and interpolation. Becuase of the limitations of interpolation filters, sampling rate is the single most important parameter that determines accuracy. The amlitude frequency response of one model of analog and two models of digital electrocardiographs were measured and compared with each other. The poor performance of one model of digital electrocardiograph was attributed to an effective sampling rate of only 250 Hz. The AAMI and AHA performance standards for electrocardiographs were analyzed. There should not be separate, relaxed standards for digital electrocardiographs. The sampling rate should be high enough (at least 500 Hz) so that digital electrocardiographs have the desired frequency response.
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Michael D. Menz (1994) studied this question.
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