A Unified Approach of ECG Signal Analysis

The bio-potentials generated by the muscles of the heart result in an electrical signal called electrocardiogram (ECG). It is one of the most important physiological parameter, which is being extensively used for knowing the state of the cardiac patients. Feature extraction of ECG is most essential task in the manual and automated ECG analysis for use in instruments like ECG monitors, Holter tape recorders and scanners, ambulatory ECG recorders and analysers. Recently, artificial intelligent tools such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy systems, and expert systems have frequently been reported for detection and diagnostic tasks. This paper, therefore, is an attempt to review the work done by the different researchers in the area of ECG signal processing, analysis and interpretation during last five decades.