ECG recording and rhythm analysis for distributed healthcare environments

In this chapter, we provide a brief review of the principles of ECG generation and the etiology of some of the most common pathological ECG rhythms and morphologies. This chapter is not intended to be a definitive exposition on ECG rhythm and morphology, but rather an illustration of the types of markers that must be identified in the ECG signal to diagnose such pathologies, and more importantly, to provide an example of the technical signal quality required to classify an ECG signal. We discuss standard practice in the acquisition and analysis of ECTG, and expand on this by illuminating the difficulties involved in the interpretation of data acquired in an unsupervised manner, in the context of distributed healthcare environments.