Preparation of electrocardiographic data for analysis by digital electronic computer.

DIGITALI electronic computers are finding increasing applications in the analysis of medical and biologic data. The principal advantages are high speed, relatively great accuracy, and extreme versatility, especially for analytic operations that are too tedious and time-consuming for routine clinical use. Large amounts of data can be processed on a completely objective basis in a relatively short time. Thus computation by commercially available machines should facilitate extensive statistical studies, mass screening of the population, and the data handling of patient records in large organizations such as the Veterans Administration. The electrocardiogram was choseni for a pilot study in automatic data processing, since it has important clinical applications as a diagnostic aid. The electrical signals from the heart are repetitive and relatively well adapted for objective mathematical treatment. Once the feasibility of the method is established in electrocardiography, only minor modifications of the equipment would be required in other applications such as phonocardiography, ballistoeardiography, hemodynamic pressure and flow curves, electroencephalography, and electromyography. Several efforts have been made in recent years to apply analog computers to the analysis of the electrocardiogram.1-8 For example, MeFee,' Sayers et al.,5 and Abildskov et al.7 have proposed conversion of signals from 3