DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.13617673
title: PMcardio ECG Image Database (PM-ECG-ID): A Diverse ECG Database for Evaluating Digitization Solutions

description: The dataset presents the collection of a diverse electrocardiogram (ECG) database for testing and evaluating ECG digitization solutions. The Powerful Medical ECG image database was curated using 100 ECG waveforms selected from the PTB-XL Digital Waveform Database and various images generated from the base waveforms with varying lead visibility and real-world paper deformations, including the use of different mobile phones, bends, crumbles, scans, and photos of computer screens with ECGs. The ECG waveforms were augmented using various techniques, including changes in contrast, brightness, perspective transformation, rotation, image blur, JPEG compression, and resolution change. This extensive approach yielded 6,000 unique entries, which provides a wide range of data variance and extreme cases to evaluate the limitations of ECG digitization solutions and improve their performance, and serves as a benchmark to evaluate ECG digitization solutions.PM-ECG-ID database contains electrocardiogram (ECG) images and their corresponding ECG information. The data records are organized in a hierarchical folder structure, which includes metadata, waveform data, and visual data folders. The contents of each folder are described below:



metadata.csv: This file serves as a key-to-key bridge between the image data and the corresponding ECG information. It contains the following columns:



Image name: image name with extension,

ECG ID: this ID corresponds to the specific ECG identifier from the original PTB-XL dataset. Under this ID you can find a cutout array in the leads.npz and rhythms.npz,

Image relative path: relative path to the image in question,

Image page: page number of the particular image (starting from 0),

ECG number of pages: number of pages in the whole ECG,

ECG number of columns per page: number of columns per page in the ECG,

ECG number of rows per page: number of rows in the ECG,

ECG number of rhythm leads:  number of rhythms in the ECG,

ECG format: short version of the ECG format.



data folder: 



leads.npz: NPZ file containing all underlying cutout lead signals; each signal is there under its ECG ID.

rhythms.npz: NPZ file containing all underlying rhythm signals; each signal is there under its ECG ID. If no rhythm lead is in the ECG, you will find an empty array in the NPZ.



visual_data folder:  This folder contains subfolders for various image data, including augmented photos and visualization and different types of photos of ECG printouts. The subfolders are organized based on the specific augmentation or type of photograph. These folders contain images with various augmentation settings, such as different levels of blur, brightness, contrast, padding, perspective transformation, resolution scaling, and rotation. The database is organized in a way that allows for easy navigation and understanding of the different augmentations applied to the image data. Each of these subfolders contains images relevant to the specific augmentation or type of photograph. The metadata.csv file provides a direct link to each image and its associated ECG information.