title: Eyewitness to history: Landmarks in the development of computerized electrocardiography.
abstract: The use of digital computers for ECG processing was pioneered in the early 1960s by two immigrants to the US, Hubert Pipberger, who initiated a collaborative VA project to collect an ECG-independent Frank lead data base, and Cesar Caceres at NIH who selected for his ECAN program standard 12-lead ECGs processed as single leads. Ray Bonner in the early 1970s placed his IBM 5880 program in a cart to print ECGs with interpretation, and computer-ECG programs were developed by Telemed, Marquette, HP-Philips and Mortara. The "Common Standards for quantitative Electrocardiography (CSE)" directed by Jos Willems evaluated nine ECG programs and eight cardiologists in clinically-defined categories. The total accuracy by a representative "average" cardiologist (75.5%) was 5.8% higher than that of the average program (69.7, p<0.001). Future comparisons of computer-based and expert reader performance are likely to show evolving results with continuing improvement of computer-ECG algorithms and changing expertise of ECG interpreters.
authors.affiliation: Division of Public Health Sciences, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC.
authors.forename: Pentti M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Rautaharju
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D012984:Software / Q000639:trends*
keywords: Classification accuracy; Computer ECG; ECG history; ECG readers