Methods Inf Med 1990; 29(04): 298-307
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1634795
ECG Interpretation Systems
Schattauer GmbH

Evaluation of ECG Interpretation Systems: Signal Analysis

Authors

  • Chr. Zywietz

    1   Arbeitsbereich Biosignal-verarbeitung, Medizinische Hochschule, Hannover, F.R.G
  • J. H. van Bemmel

    2   Dept of Medical Informatics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
  • R. Degani

    3   Ladseb-CNR, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Padova, Italy

Part of the results presented here were obtained during the project “Common Standards for Quantitative Electrocardiograpy” supported by the European Community 1980-1990, within the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Medical and Public Health Research Programme of DG XII.
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
06 February 2018 (online)

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Abstract

Performance analysis of biosignal processing systems which provide diagnostic statements requires particular care. Besides general accuracy requirements, psychological and legal implications for patient and physician have to be considered on both the development and the user sites. Cybernetics and control engineering have provided the basic methodology for performance analysis of systems: in technical systems often mathematically defined functions and signals can be fed into the system to be tested and its response and output provide the necessary performance characteristics after adequate mathematical analysis. For systems which process biosignals, as for example ECG analysis systems, instead of analytically given signals learning and test sets of data derived from patients have to be applied. The performance analysis is done on a statistical basis. In this paper construction and composition of learning and test data sets as well as methods for performance evaluation of the signal pocessing part of ECG programs are described. Specific reference is made to the European project Common Standards for Quantitative Electrocardiography (CSE) where ten ECG- and nine VCG-programs have been tested. The results of these tests provide reference data and standards for further program development as well as for independent system performance evaluation.