CIRCUIT FOR MINIMIZING FALSE ALARMS IN COMPUTERIZED ECG MONITORING.

Recording the electrocardiogram (ECG) from ambulatory subjects has two main applications. In one application, the physician detects arrhythmias or abnormal ECGs resulting from conditions of stress. In the other application he detects arrhythmias that occur infrequently by recording the ECG over a 24-h period on Holter tapes. In both cases the ECG record contains artifacts and noise. When a human operator scans the recording, he easily recognizes artifacts and noise. However, automatic ECG analysis systems are confused and yield false alarms. The occurrence of a high level of such false alarms would be quite unacceptable in a portable arrhythmia monitor the authors have designed. This paper describes and evaluates a technique for predicting arrhythmias and noise that cause false R-wave detection.