title: Digitizing paper electrocardiograms: Status and challenges.
abstract: The paper electrocardiogram (ECG) has been widely used for cardiac assessment for well over a century. ECGs can be obtained quickly and cheaply. For this reason, an ever-growing amount of paper ECG records continue to accumulate, some of which are stored into a paper-only format. Converting paper ECGs into digital form has been proposed as the most efficient means to store and analyze an otherwise cumbersome paper archive. In this article, a literature review was conducted for conversion algorithms, criticisms of said algorithms, applications, and standardization efforts. The algorithms were compared in tabulated form. Key functions that have advanced the conversion algorithms as well as remaining challenges are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston Salem, NC. Electronic address: gwaits@wakehealth.edu.
authors.forename: George S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Waits
authors.affiliation: Epidemiological Cardiology Research Center (EPICARE), Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, and Department of Internal Medicine, Cardiology Section, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston Salem, NC.
authors.forename: Elsayed Z
authors.initials: EZ
authors.lastname: Soliman
mesh_terms: D066289:Data Curation / Q000379:methods*; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000379:methods*; D010209:Paper; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Conversion; Digitization; Electrocardiogram