American Heart Association ECG Database USB

The American Heart Association (AHA) developed a database of arrhythmias and normal electrocardiograms (ECG) contained in two series of meticulously-edited, beat-by-beat, annotated recordings, available on a USB drive. Develop your arrhythmia detection routines using series one recordings and check your final routines using series two recordings.

Development of the database started in 1977 as a project of the American Heart Association, Council on Clinical Cardiology, Committee on Electrocardiography and Clinical Electrophysiology. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute provided funding. Recordings were developed from actual patients and donated to the project by a number of institutions.

Training tool

Health professionals benefit from training with annotated recordings because of the careful identification of specific arrhythmias. This tool is an asset for medical schools, hospital in-service training, and technical training programs. Use the viewer to access ECGs with or without the beat-by-beat annotation visible.

The USB contains a total of 154 recordings from eight arrhythmia categories. Each recording is three hours long and the beats in the last 30 minutes have been classified. The digitized information includes: 2-channel ECG data at 250 samples/second, 12-bit precision; beat arrhythmia classification data; and timing data. View a sample recording.

ECRI is the exclusive custodian of the recordings

Contact our staff to learn how this resource can help. Call us at (610) 825-6000, ext. 5891 or e-mail clientservices@ecri.org.