The Dynamic Range of an Ecg in the Time-frequency Domain Used for the Lossless Signal Compression

Time-frequency domain compression of an ECG is the new and still underestimated issue. This paper is devoted to the statistical analysis of the ECG' dynamic ranges on various aspects of time-frequency plane. The traditional approach to the signal values distribution, originally introduced by Huffman, is now studied for integer time-frequency coefficients obtained with use of reversible integer-to-integer wavelet transform. Obtained results determine limits of perfectly lossless compression ratios for an electrocardiogram. They are interesting for comparative purposes and further development of nearly lossless algorithms. The research had initially only experimental aims, but practical hardware implementation is also feasible.