ECGSYN: A realistic ECG waveform generator

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Introduction

The FECGSYN toolbox is a reference open-source platform for NI-FECG research, product of a collaboration between the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford (DES-OX), the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, TU Dresden (IBMT-TUD) and the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology (BME-IIT). The authors are Joachim Behar (DES-OX,BME-IIT), Fernando Andreotti (IBMT-TUD), Julien Oster (DES-OX), Sebastian Zaunseder (IBMT-TUD) and Gari D. Clifford (DES-OX). For further information please visit the toolbox’s website.

The authors invite researchers contribute new algorithms or databases to this toolbox. Please refer to the documentation and information about how to contribute!

Features

Realistic modelling of adult and foetal ECGs
Several NI-FECG extraction methods available
Benchmarking algorithms for NI-FECG QRS detection and extraction of morphological features
Large freely available database of simulated NI-FECG signals — see FECGSYN-DB
Numerous examples of how to use the toolbox

How to download

The latest stable version of the source code for MATLAB and Octave is available at github.com/fernandoandreotti/fecgsyn/archive/master.zip.
For developers, a Github repository with the current issues is also available. A log of the changes made to each version is available here.

All the code is freely available under the GNU GPL (General Public License).

Screenshots

From left to right: screenshots of the volume conductor with the electrodes and hearts location, the FECGSYN graphical user interface (FECGSYNGUI) and an example of FECG extraction from the abdominal mixture using the template subtraction approach.

Referencing this work

When using FECGSYN, please reference at least one of the following articles:

Behar J., Andreotti F., Zaunseder S., Li Q., Oster J. and Clifford G D., An ECG model for simulating maternal-foetal activity mixtures on abdominal ECG recordings. Physiol Meas 35, pp.1537-50, 2014.

and/or

Andreotti F., Behar J., Zaunseder S.,Oster J. and Clifford G D., An Open-Source Framework for Stress-Testing Non-Invasive Foetal ECG Extraction Algorithms. Physiol Meas 5, pp. 627-648, 2016.

Contribute

FECGSYN is updated often. Fellow researchers and collaborators are welcome to contribute with their own code. Please refer to information about how to contribute, and to the FECGSYN GitHub repository.

History

FECGSYN is built upon the work from McSharry et al. and Sameni et al.. The original code from McSharry et al. is available in MATLAB and in C on PhysioNet (ECGSYN). The code developed by Sameni et al. is part of the OSET toolbox, also available online in MATLAB (OSET). The FECGSYN was further used in creating the FECGSYN Database.

References:

McSharry, P. E., & Clifford, G. D. (2003). A Dynamical Model for Generating Synthetic Electrocardiogram Signals, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., 50(3):289–294; March 2003.
Sameni, R., Clifford, G. D., Jutten, C., Shamsollahi, M. B. (2007). Multichannel ECG and Noise Modeling: Application to Maternal and Fetal ECG Signals. EURASIP J Adv Signal Process, 2007(1), 043407.

Questions and Comments

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Updated Monday, 9 May 2016 at 12:18 EDT

PhysioNet is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) under NIH grant number 2R01GM104987-09.