Ventricular Premature Beat Detection in ECG using Correlation Techniques

Correlation techniques are used to find whether the electrocardiogram (ECG) is normal or abnormal. These correlation techniques could be further used to detect the type of abnormality present in the abnormal ECG. Reference ECG signals could be stored for all type of abnormalities and the test ECG signal if correlated with the stored references will give highest correlation percentage with the type of abnormality present in it. Arrhythmias are one of the abnormalities in ECG. Among various arrhythmias one of the life threatening arrhythmia is Ventricular premature beat.which occurs when an ectopic pacemaker fires early, before the sino atrial impulse has a chance to reach it. In this paper, to demonstrate the proposed technique of detecting the type of abnormality present in ECG, two types of reference ECG signals are stored; Ventricular Premature Beat and normal ECG Beat. Every test ECG beat is correlated with the two beats. The test beat is declared to be the type of the reference beat with which it has maximum correlation