Method for mapping cardiac arrhythmia in real time using microprocessor-based systems

The paper deseribes a method for mapping cardiac arrhythmias in real time using an 8 bit microprocessor system, the aim being to produce a monitor display that is ergonomically an improvement on the raw ECG signal in that its interpretation by medical staff is less onerous. Two characteristics are extracted from each QRS complex, one representing rhythm and the other the morphology of the complex. Both are easily implemented on microprocessor-based systems and together they define a twodimensional display divided into four primary diagnostic regions. The performance of the proposed system has been compared with that of another two-dimensional algorithm commonly used in this field, the cross-correlation scatter diagram, by applying both to the same sample of complexes. The method proposed in the paper was found to be both faster and more discriminating.