MIT-BIH Malignant Ventricular Ectopy Database

Paul Albrecht, George Moody, Roger Mark

Published: Aug. 3, 1999. Version: 1.0.0

When using this resource, please cite the original publication:
Greenwald SD. Development and analysis of a ventricular fibrillation detector. M.S. thesis, MIT Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1986.

Please include the standard citation for PhysioNet:
Goldberger, A., Amaral, L., Glass, L., Hausdorff, J., Ivanov, P. C., Mark, R., ... & Stanley, H. E. (2000). PhysioBank, PhysioToolkit, and PhysioNet: Components of a new research resource for complex physiologic signals. Circulation [Online]. 101 (23), pp. e215–e220.

Data Description

This database includes 22 half-hour ECG recordings of subjects who experienced episodes of sustained ventricular tachycardia, ventricular flutter, and ventricular fibrillation. The reference annotation (.atr) files contain only rhythm labels (no beat labels).

Annotations in the MIT-BIH Malignant Ventricular Fibrillation Database
All of the annotations contained in the .atr files of this database are rhythm change annotations, and almost all of them mark changes in cardiac rhythm (a few indicate episodes of noise or asystole). The table below indicates how the aux strings of these annotations should be interpreted.

• AFIB: atrial fibrillation
• ASYS: asystole
• B: ventricular bigeminy
• BI: first degree heart block
• HGEA: high grade ventricular ectopic activity
• N or NSR: normal sinus rhythm
• NOD: nodal ("AV junctional") rhythm
• NOISE: noise
• PM: pacemaker (paced rhythm)
• SBR: sinus bradycardia
• SVTA: supraventricular tachyarrhythmia
• VER: ventricular escape rhythm
• VF or VFIB: ventricular fibrillation
• VFL: ventricular flutter
• VT: ventricular tachycardia

In each case, the rhythm change annotations are placed at the beginning of the episode of the indicated rhythm. The previous rhythm continues during episodes marked by (NOISE; the noise ends at the time of the next annotation.

Further reading

Greenwald SD, Albrecht P, Moody GB, Mark RG. Estimating confidence limits for arrhythmia detector performance. Computers in Cardiology 1985; 12:383–386.