Rapid technicological changes in the field of Ambulatory Electrocardiographic Monitoring (A-ECG) have resulted in the availability of multiple A-ECG procedure methods where previously there was only one. This has created challenges both to the clinician and medical insurance carries, especially in the areas of equipment performances standards and quality assurance. To meet these challenges, the proposed research will establish a large Multiarrhythmia Database (MAD) containing beat-by-beat annotated digital ECG waveform information from over 1000 A-ECG recordings across 32 major cardiac arrhythmia classes and 5 artifact classes. Three national analysis centers will identify the candidate A-ECG recordings out of a pool of approximately 2000 A-ECG tapes per month. All Administrative, clinical, and technical protocols have been developed which will allow waveform review, editing, labeling, and archival storage of 6 hour segments of each A-ECG recording on an opital disk mass storage subsystem. The final database will provide an extensive Arrhythmia Library System (ALS) accessible for multiple clinical, academic, and industrial applications including (but not limited to): New analysis algorithm development and testing; recording and processing equipment performance evaluations; computer based cardiac arrhythmia training systems design; and a national A-ECG Laboratory Quality Assurance program.
