A signals and systems and object oriented programming approach to development of ECG analysis software

Abstract

A Visual Software Development Framework (VSDF) has been created to facilitate the software coding process of biological signal analysis. A special purpose graphical user interface (GUI) was developed using VSDF for automating the analysis and classification of waveforms in electrocardiographic (ECG) data. Graphing capabilities were included in the program to allow the user to plot the signal as well as trigger location. Object Oriented Programming (OOP) techniques were used in the Java programming language to calculate correlation coefficients between a template QRS complex and detected QRS complexes throughout an ECG recording. The OOP techniques employed in the development of the software package allow visualization of the entire analysis process. The ECG signal, read from a file, is stored into a simple array data structure and is passed to each of the modules. The signals and systems approach allows incorporation of trigger modules, data conversion modules, and numerical analysis modules directly into the software package, providing ease of software design.