Computers and Electrical Engineering 31 (2005) 334344

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Improved modied AZTEC technique for ECG data compression: Eect of length of parabolic lter on reconstructed signal
Vinod Kumar
a

a,*

, S.C. Saxena b, V.K. Giri a, Dilbag Singh

Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee 247 667, India b Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala, Punjab 147 004, India

Received 14 March 2003; received in revised form 10 January 2004; accepted 9 February 2005

Abstract The existing techniques for electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression have been classied into three major categories, namely, direct data compression (DDC), transformation compression (TC) and parameter extraction compression (PEC). This paper deals with an ecient DDC algorithm, which has been developed over existing modied Amplitude Zone Time Epoch Coding (AZTEC) technique, named as improved modied AZTEC and tested on Common Standard for quantitative Electrocardiography (CSE) database. The performance has been evaluated on the basis of compression ratio (CR), percentroot-mean-square dierence (PRD) and delity of the reconstructed signal. A comparison of the wavelet-derived features of compressed and original signals has been used for performance evaluation of the compressed signal. In this paper, the eect of length of least-square polynomial smoothing lters, i.e., parabolic lters, on the reconstructed signal has been analyzed. The use of 7-point parabolic lter has been found to improve the percent-root-mean-square dierence (PRD), i.e. lower PRD, compared to reconstruction process of ECG signal without lter. It is also observed that the use of parabolic lters rejects high frequency noise, which is reected in the form of reduced electromyographic noise. 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: ECG; Data compression; Direct data compression; FIR; Parabolic lters

Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 1332 285593; fax: +91 1332 273560. E-mail address: vinodfee@iitr.ernet.in (V. Kumar).

0045-7906/$ - see front matter 2005 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.compeleceng.2005.02.002

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1. Introduction The electrocardiogram (ECG) is the electrical manifestation of the contractile activity of the heart that can be recorded fairly easily. It is an important physiological parameter, extensively used for knowing the status of cardiac patients. For critical cardiac patients, ambulatory patients, astronauts and people under cardiac surveillance, the ECG signal is recorded and transmitted to a distant location continuously. The recorded data becomes so voluminous in size that it becomes practically impossible to handle transmission and storage without its compression. The compression of digital ECG has received great attention of researchers since the computer-aided analysis came into existence. The existing methods for ECG data compression can be broadly classied into three major categories, i.e. (i) direct data compression (DDC) (ii) transformation compression (TC), and (iii) parameter extraction compression (PEC). Main goal of any data compression method is to obtain maximum data reduction without sacricing clinically signicant information [1]. Conceptually, data compression is the process of detecting and eliminating redundancies in a given data set. DDC methods are based on their detection of redundancies on direct analysis of the actual signal samples. In TC, the original samples are subjected to a (linear) transformation and the compression is performed in the new domain. It mainly utilize spectral and energy distribution analysis for detecting redundancies. While, PEC is an irreversible process with which a particular characteristic or parameter of the signal is extracted. The extracted parameter (e.g. measurement of the probability distribution) is subsequently utilized for the classication based on a priori knowledge of the signal features [2]. The DDC schemes are: Amplitude Zone Time Epoch Coding (AZTEC) [3], Turning Point (TP), Coordinate-Reduction-TimeEncoding System (CORTES) [4], modied AZTEC [5], Fan [6,7] and scan along polygonal approximation (SAPA) schemes (SAPA-1, SAPA-2 and SAPA-3) [8]. Later, it has also been reported that the SAPA-2 algorithm is equivalent to Fan technique [9]. These methods are generally preferred for ECG data compression because they are easy to implement and computationally ecient. All DDC methods are based on the principle of tolerance compression [10]. The compression ratio (CR) is governed by the level of threshold applied; smaller the threshold, lower the CR and higher the retrieved signal quality, and vice versa. The present paper deals with improved modied AZTEC data compression as applied to ECG data. The performance has been evaluated on the basis of CR, percent-root-mean-square dierence (PRD) and the delity of the reconstructed signal. Further, in order to know the extent to which the diagnostic information is preserved during compression, features have been extracted using wavelet transform method, both on the original and reconstructed ECG signal and compared. In this paper, the eect of length of least square polynomial smoothing lters, i.e. parabolic lters, on the reconstructed signal has been analyzed. The objective of this paper is to assess the eect of this parameter on the quality of the reconstructed signal and the PRD achieved.

2. Improved modied AZTEC technique In modied AZTEC (MAZTEC) algorithm, statistical parameters of the signal to be compressed are calculated and then these parameters adapt themselves to the nature of the signal by recalculating the threshold value. The proposed adaptive algorithm optimizes the tradeo

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between data reduction and information content of the signal. The data reduction is not constant, but depends on the nature of the signal [5]. The algorithm uses an adaptive threshold decided by the nature of individual segment of the ECG signal. To begin with, a series of samples, Xi (i = 1, 2, . . . , n), where n denotes the number of samples, is taken. Initially, Xmin = Xmax = X1 are assumed and subsequently, samples X2, X3, . . . , Xn are compared with Xmax and Xmin such that if Xi > Xmax then Xmax = Xi, and on the other hand, if Xi < Xmin then Xmin = Xi. This process is continued till Xmax Xmin becomes greater than the set threshold. When threshold is exceeded, the number of samples (k) under consideration and their mean value are stored. To determine variable threshold initially, statistical parameters namely, mean value (X k ), standard deviation (rk) and third moment (Mk) after kth sample are calculated as under Mean value; X k k 1X k1 X k ; k " # 2 1=2 k 1r2 X X k k k 1 Standard deviation; rk ; k " # 3 1=3 k 1M 3 X X k k k 1 Third moment; M k . k 1 2

The statistical parameters are immediately updated by recursive calculations. After each sample, a criterion function CFk is determined as CFk C 1 rk M k ; where C 1 is a constant. 4 5 The threshold is continuously updated by using the following equation: T k T k 1 C 2 CFk CFk 1 T k1 ; where C2 is constant, Tk1 is threshold, and CFk1 is criterion function after (k 1) samples. The values of C1 and C2 have been analyzed empirically. In the rst attempt, the value of C2 is kept constant, i.e. equal to 1.0 and value of C1 is varied from 0.1 to 10 and then from 0.01 to 0.09. It has been observed that maximum CR is achieved for the variation of C1 in range (0.010.09). In second attempt, the value of C1 is kept constant and the value of C2 is varied from 1 to 9 and from 10 to 120. Then it has been observed that for the variation of C2 from 1 to 9, the maximum CR is achieved. Thus, it has been observed that the value of C1 should be kept between 0.01 and 0.09 and value of C2 between 1 and 9. In the present work, C1 has been taken 0.01 and C2 equal to 1. Further improvements have been made in the modied AZTEC technique to increase its eectiveness and named as improved modied AZTEC. The improvements in the results of modied AZTEC have been obtained by incorporating following two steps: (i) For the evaluation of the statistical parameters namely the mean, the standard deviation and the third moment for the next compression cycle, Xmax and Xmin values are initialized to rst sample of the segment under consideration after each plateau or slope. (ii) The statistical parameters of previous segments are not considered for the evaluation of mean, standard and third moment of the next compression cycle. All are reset to zero before starting the processing of next set.

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3. Compression ratio and percent-root-mean-square dierence Any performance criterion used to evaluate an ECG compression algorithm must include two factors: the amount of compression and the resultant reconstruction error. Several diculties exist in the denitions of these two factors. The amount of compression is very often represented in terms of compression ratio, and is dened as the ratio between the rate of the compressed signal (in terms of bits per second) to the rate of the original signal. Each algorithm, however, uses different sampling frequency and dierent number of quantization condition bits so the reference rate is nonstandard [11]. Expressing the reconstruction error is a very dicult and challenging task. For the quantitative comparison of the distortion in the reconstructed signal, many researchers have used PRD as the performance index, which is dened as "P # n 2 1=2 i0 xorg i xrec i Pn 2 100; 6 PRD i0 xorg i where xorg and xrec are samples of the original and reconstructed ECG data sequence. However, clinically acceptable quality is neither guaranteed by low PRD nor ruled out by high value [12]. It is easy to calculate, and thus extensively used performance index in the ECG compression techniques.

4. Signal reconstruction and delity There are several methods of evaluating the performance of the compressed data. An eective evaluation requires that the signal be reconstructed from the compressed data and then compared with the original signal. In all the DDC techniques, signal reconstruction is obtained by just expanding the horizontal line data and slope data into respective sets of discrete points. Finally, the delity measure of the reconstructed signal compared to the original ECG is primarily based on visual inspection. The standard least-square polynomial curve-tting technique has been used in all these cases. This is done in order to avoid the step line quantization error so that the reconstructed signal is acceptable to the physician. In the present work, eect of the use of dierent standard least-square polynomial curve tting techniques is considered in detail.

5. Least-squares polynomial smoothing lters This family of nite impulse response lters, ts a parabola to an odd number (2L + 1) of input data points in a least-square sense (L is an integer). Fig. 1(a) shows that the output of the lter is the midpoint of the parabola. Writing the equation for a parabola at each point, we obtain pnT kT anT bnT k cnT k 2 ; where k ranges from L to L. 7

The t is found by selecting a(nT), b(nT) and c(nT) to minimize the squared error between parabola and input data. Setting the partial-derivatives of the error with respect to a(nT),

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Amplitude

nT-6T
(a)

nT-4T

nT-2T

nT

Time

z-1 -2 3

z-1 6

z-1 7

z-1 6

z-1 3

z-1 -2

Y
(b)

1/21

Fig. 1. (a) Parabolic tting of group of seven sampled data points; (b) signal-ow graph of polynomial smoothing lter with seven points.

b(nT) and c(nT) equal to zero results in a set of simultaneous equations in a(nT), b(nT), c(nT), k and p(nT kT). Solving to obtain an expression for a(nT), the value of the parabola at k = 0 yields an expression, a function of the input values [13]. The coecients of this expression are the tap weights for the least-square polynomial lter as shown in the signal ow graph of Fig. 1(b) for a 7-point lter. The dierence equations for the 7-, 9- and 11-points parabolic lters are: 1 Y nT 2X nT 3X nT T 6X nT 2T 7X nT 3T 6X nT 4T 21 3X nT 5T 2X nT 6T ; 8 1 21X nT 14X nT T 39X nT 2T 54X nT 3T 59X nT 4T Y nT 231 54X nT 5T 39X nT 6T 14X nT 7T 21X nT 8T ; 9 1 36X nT 9X nT T 44X nT 2T 69X nT 3T 84X nT 4T Y nT 429 89X nT 5T 84X nT 6T 69X nT 7T 44X nT 8T 9X nT 9T 36X nT 10T . 10

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6. Test results and discussions The ECG data used for the evaluation of the performance is the Common Standards for Quantitative Electrocardiography (CSE) database, with a sampling frequency of 500 Hz [14]. In the present work, test results of compression algorithms for lead 1L1.dat of CSE database (MA_001.DCD) are presented. Table 1 shows a comparison between the test results of compression by modied AZTEC and improved modied AZTEC method. After compression for dierent values of threshold (ranging from 0.010 mV to 0.035 mV), it is observed that the reduced number of data having dierent CR values (2.769.91) and PRD (4.57.9%) for improved modied AZTEC method are superior than its predecessor. Though, the compression algorithms have been tested for all the 125 records of CSE database but because of space constraint, only one lead test results are shown here. The study of use of dierent lter length has also been carried out and Table 2 shows the eect of smoothening lter length. Table 2 shows the analysis of reconstruction of the compressed ECG signal without any lter and with using 7-point, 9-point and 11-point parabolic smoothening lters. The corresponding PRD and CR are calculated for each case at dierent threshold values. The result obtained is for the improved modied AZTEC compression algorithm. It is obvious from Table 1 that the PRD for each value of threshold is always less for 7-point smoothing parabolic lter compared to that obtained using 9-point and 11-point lters.
Table 1 Performance indices of modied AZTEC method and improved modied AZTEC method (lead 1L1.dat of MA_001.DCD) Threshold T0 (mV) Modied AZTEC method No. of compressed data 2736 1988 1477 1191 922 624 Compression ratio 1.83 2.51 3.38 4.19 5.42 8.01 PRD (%) 8.9 9.6 10.6 11.8 13.2 14.2 Improved modied AZTEC method No. of compressed data 1812 1373 1150 921 684 504 Compression ratio 2.76 3.64 4.35 5.43 7.30 9.91 PRD (%) 4.5 5.6 6.6 6.9 7.7 7.9

0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035

Table 2 Analysis of the eect of the length of smoothening lter Threshold (mV) 0.010 0.015 0.020 0.025 0.030 0.035 Compression ratio (CR) 2.76 3.64 4.35 5.43 7.30 9.91 PRD without lter (%) 5.65 6.77 7.62 7.91 8.75 9.43 PRD with 7-point lter (%) 4.54 5.65 6.66 6.98 7.60 7.92 PRD with 9-point lter (%) 5.11 6.00 6.78 7.08 7.70 7.99 PRD with 11-point lter (%) 6.03 6.62 7.21 7.37 7.76 7.93

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The 7-point, 9-point and 11-point parabolic lters taper at both the ends of the ECG signal. In order to tackle this problem, the reconstructed signal has been extrapolated at the ends with respective end values. Fig. 2 shows the variations in CR and PRD at dierent threshold values for the 7-point, 9-point, 11-point smoothing lters and without lter. Finally, it is found that 7-point lter is the most suitable for the ECG signal reconstruction. As desired CR increases as threshold increases. It is also observed that after a certain value of threshold (0.035 mV) PRD gets saturated at some value (approximately 8%) and PRD is always high for all the threshold values, when the reconstruction is done without using smoothing lter. Comparison of the reconstructed signal without and with 7-point, 9-point, 11-point parabolic lters is shown in Fig. 3. It is obvious from Fig. 3 that, when reconstruction is done without using any smoothing lter, the signal has step-like discontinuities and long horizontal lines, which is not desirable to physicians. Reconstruction signal with 7-point lter shows the best delity as compared to 9-point and 11-point smoothing lters. It can also be observed that because of the use of the smoothing parabolic lter, power line interference and electromyographic (EMG) noise has signicantly been reduced. Table 3 shows the comparison of some of the diagnostic parameters of original ECG signal and reconstructed signal with 7-point, 9-point, 11-point lter and without lter. The diagnostic parameters such as: heart rate (beats per minute), P-amplitude (P-amp) in mV, P-duration (Pdur) in second, PR interval (PR-int) in second, QRS-interval (QRS-int) in second, QRS peak

Effect of length of filter

10 10

PRD of different filter length (%)

Compression Ratio (CR)

Compression Ratio (CR) PRD with 7-pt filter

PRD with 9-pt filter PRD with 11-pt filter PRD without filter

0 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04

Threshold (mV)

Fig. 2. CR and PRD versus threshold characteristics for dierent length parabolic lters.

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Fig. 3. Comparison of reconstructed signal with dierent length parabolic lters.

Table 3 Comparison of diagnostic parameters Threshold T0 (mV) 1L1.dat original signal Reconstruction with 7-pt lter Reconstruction with 9-pt lter Reconstruction with 11-pt lter Reconstruction without lter HR (bpm) 63.83 63.83 63.83 63.83 63.83 P-amp (mV) 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06 0.06 P-dur (s) 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.10 PR-int (s) 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.23 QRS-int (s) 0.12 0.12 0.12 0.12 0.12 QRS-pp (mV) 0.64 0.62 0.61 0.61 0.61 QT-int (s) 0.46 0.42 0.42 0.45 0.42 VAT (s) 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 T-amp (mV) 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18 0.18

to peak amplitude (QRS-pp) in mV, QT interval (QT-int) in second, ventricular activation time (VAT) in second and T amplitude (T-amp) in mV have been calculated. The wavelet transform method has been used for this purpose. The main advantage of wavelet transform method over time-domain method is that it provides a full picture of the signal in a number of frequency bands simultaneously, rather than representing the signal in a single frequency band that would contain merely a fraction of the diagnostic information [15]. On the basis of extensive study and experience with wavelets, it has been found that quadratic spline wavelet transform (QSWT) is best suitable and ecient for QRS detection. It gives higher rate of correct detection, i.e. 99.91% [16]. The QSWT has two high pass lter coecients, which are high in magnitude and are on either side of the reference line (zero-crossing). These two high magnitude coecients help to emerge modulus maxima lines corresponding to ECG samples,

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particularly from the QRS complexes, which also have samples on either side of the reference line. Using the above concept rst, the QRS complex ducials are found out and then by mapping, the actual QRS complex is found out. Once the QRS complexes have been identied, the other abovementioned diagnostic parameters are calculated. It can be observed from the results shown in Table 3 that the variations in diagnostic information are not signicant. As per CSE working party, a recommended tolerance of 12 ms (i.e. six sample position) is admissible. It further strengthens the statement that clinically acceptable quality is neither guaranteed by low PRD nor ruled out by high value of PRD [17]. It can be concluded from the above discussion that PRD alone cannot be taken as the performance index of the reconstructed signal, which has been drawn from the compressed ECG data. Comparison of diagnostic parameters of the signals and visual observation of the graphical representation also play an important role. 7. Conclusion The ECG data has been successfully compressed using the basic concept of existing modied AZTEC technique and named as improved modied AZTEC. The value of compression ratio ranges between 2.76 and 9.91 for the corresponding threshold variation from 0.010 to 0.035 mV and respective variation in PRD from 4.54 to 7.99. A comprehensive study has been carried out on delity of the reconstructed signals. It has been concluded that use of least-squares polynomial smoothing lters reduces the PRD. A comparative study has shown that 7-point smoothing parabolic lter is the best choice for reconstruction over 9- and 11-point lters. It has also been observed that with the use of smoothing lters, noise such as power line interference and electomyographic noise is signicantly reduced. Performance evaluation of the reconstructed signal has also been exercised by comparing some diagnostic parameters, calculated using wavelet transform. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the referees for their valuable comments and suggestions. They would also like to acknowledge the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, for providing various facilities to carryout this work. The authors wish to put on record the generosity of the CSE working party for providing the ECG database. References
[1] Reddy BRS, Murthy ISN. ECG data compression using Fourier descriptor. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 1986;BME33:42834. [2] Jalaleddine SMS, Hutchens CG, Strattan RD, Coberly WA. ECG data compression techniquesa unied approach. IEEE Trans BME 1990;37:32942. [3] Cox JR, Nolle FM, Fozzard HA, Oliver GC. AZTEC: a preprocessing program for real time ECG rhythm analysis. IEEE Trans BME 1968;15:1289. [4] Abenstein JP, Tompkins WJ. A new data reduction algorithm for real time ECG analysis. IEEE Trans BME 1982;35:438.

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[5] Furht B, Perez A. An adaptive real-time ECG compression algorithm with variable threshold. IEEE Trans BME 1988;35(June):4948. [6] Gardenhire LW. Redundancy reduction the key to adaptive telemetry. In: Proceedings of the 1964 National Telemetry Conference; 1964. p. 116. [7] Bohs LN, Barr RC. Prototype for real time adaptive sampling using the Fan algorithm. Med Biol Eng Comput 1988;26:57483. [8] Ishijima M, Shin SB, Hostetter GH, Sklansky J. Scan along polygon approximation for data compression of electrocardiograms. IEEE Trans BME 1983;30(November):7239. [9] Barr RC, Blanchard SM, Dipersio DA. SAPA-2 is the Fan. IEEE Trans BME 1985;32(5):337. [10] Kulkarni PK, Vinod K, Verma HK. Direct data compression techniques for ECG signals: eect of sampling frequency on performance. Int J Syst Sci 1997;28(3):21728. [11] Nave G, Cohen A. ECG compression using long-term prediction. IEEE Trans BME 1993;40(9):87785. [12] Zigel Y, Cohen A, Katz A. The weighted diagnostic distortion (WDD) measure for ECG signal compression. IEEE Trans BME 2000;47(11):142230. [13] Tompkins WJ. Biomedical digital signal processing. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall of India; 1999. [14] Willems JL. Common standard for quantitative electrocardiography, Measurement resultdata set 3. Commission of the European Communities, Medical and Public Health Research, Leuven, 15th April 1988. [15] Al-Shrouf A, Abo-Zahhad M, Ahmed SM. A novel compression algorithm for electrocardiogram signals based on the linear prediction of the wavelet coecients. Digital Signal Process 2003;13(4):60422. [16] Hamde ST. Analysis and interpretation of ECG signal using wavelet transform, PhD thesis, UOR, Roorkee; 2000. [17] Moody GB, Soroushain K, Mark RG. ECG data compression for tapeless ambulatory monitors. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Computers in Cardiology; 1988. p. 46770. Vinod Kumar Professor, obtained his B.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) Hons Degree from Punjab University in 1973, ME (Measurement and Instrumentation) Hons and Ph.D. Degree from IIT Roorkee (formerly University of Roorkee, Roorkee) in 1975 and 1984, respectively. He joined the Electrical Engineering Department of University of Rookee (presently, IIT Roorkee), Roorkee in 1975. He has published more than 97 research papers, at dierent national and international levels. He has undertaken large number of consultancy and sponsored projects from industries and government departments. He was elected as Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (I), Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, senior member IEEE and is a member of many professional bodies. He has received many awards including KS Krishnan Medal of IETE, Khosla Medals of IIT Roorkee and best paper awards of the Institution of Engineers. He has also conducted several courses, workshops for the benet of faculty and eld engineers. He has served as coordinator, Audio Visual Research Centre, Information Superhighway Centre (ISC) of IIT, Roorkee. Presently, he is Professor and Head of Continuing Education Centre of the institute. His areas of interest are Measurement and Instrumentation, Medical Instrumentation, Digital Signal Processing and Telemedicine. Suresh Chandra Saxena obtained BE (Electrical) from Allahabad University in 1970 and ME Electrical (M&I) and Ph.D. from University of Roorkee in 1973 and 1977, respectively. He has served as an expert at Military Technical College, Baghdad, Iraq during 19831986 and as an advisor in AICTE, New Delhi in the year 1994. Dr. Saxena is presently working as Director, Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology Patiala (Punjab). He was Head of Department of Electrical Engineering from 1997 to 2000 at IIT Roorkee. He was also Dean of Students welfare of Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. He has published about 140 research papers at national and international levels; written six monographs; received nine awards including Khosla Gold Medal and Cash Award, President of Indias Prize, Jawaharlal Memorial Award. He is a fellow of IEI, Fellow of IETE, and Life Member of BMESI, NIQR, ISTE and ISCEE. He is

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Vice-President of Biomedical Engineering, Society of India, former Council member of the IE (I); and Chairman, Consultants Committee of Roorkee School for the Deaf. He has been the Honorary Secretary of Roorkee local Centre of the IE (I) and worked on number of Expert Committees of AICTE, New Delhi and University Sector Institutions. His areas of specializations are Biomedical Engineering, Measurement and Instrumentation. He has experience of over 25 years of consultancy and testing. He is a trained Motivation Trainer by NIMID Bombay and NIESBUD; New Delhi. V.K. Giri obtained his BE (Electrical) Degree from REC, Surat (Gujrat) in 1988 and ME (Measurement and Instrumentation) Hons Degree and Ph.D. from IIT Roorkee (formerly University of Roorkee, Roorkee) in 1997 and 2003 respectively. He is serving as Sr. Lecturer in M.M.M. Engineering College, Gorakhpur (UP). He is the life member of ISTE, member IEE and member CSI. He has published 14 research papers. His research interests include Biomedical Instrumentation, Data Compression and Telemedicine.

Dilbag Singh was born in Adyana (Panipat) in 1969. He received his BE in Electrical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India in 1991 and ME in Control and Guidance from University of Roorkee, Roorkee in 1993. After a brief stint at Goodyear India Limited, Faridabad, he joined as Lecturer in Instrumentation and Control Engineering at National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar in 1994. Since 2000, he is Sr. Lecturer in the same department, where he is teaching undergraduate courses related to biomedical signal processing and instrumentation. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee in 2004, with a dissertation on analysis and interpretation of heart rate and blood pressure variability. His professional research activity lies in the eld of biomedical signal processing, with main interest in signals of cardiovascular origin, time-frequency/time-scale signal analysis.