Identification of Cardiac Diseases from(ECG) Signals based on Fractal Analysis

Abstract

This paper investigates the use of fractal geometry for analyzing ECG time series signals. A technique of identifying cardiac diseases is proposed which is based on estimation of Fractal Dimension (FD) of ECG recordings. Using this approach, variations in texture across an ECG signal can be characterized in terms of variations in the FD values. An overview of methods for computing the FD is presented focusing on the Power Spectrum Method (PSM) that makes use of the characteristic of Power Spectral Density Function (PSDF) of a Random Scaling Fractal Signal. A 20 dataset of ECG signals taken from MIT-BIH arrhythmia database has been utilized to estimate the FD, which established ranges of FD for healthy person and persons with various heart diseases. The obtained ranges of FD are presented in tabular fashion with proper analysis. Moreover, the experimental results showing comparison of Normal and Abnormal (arrhythmia) ECG signals and demonstrated that the PSM shows a better distinguish between the ECG signals for healthy and non-healthy persons versus the other methods.