AMPS is proud to announce a joint project with Dr. Pierre Maison-Blanche with the aim of launching an annotated Holter recording database.

Dr. Pierre Maison-Blanche, a graduate from the University of Paris, received a degree in cardiology in 1986. During his time at the university he worked with Professor Philippe Coumel. Since then he has accumulated and annotated a vast amount of continuous ECG recordings and he has now decided to make this data available by means of a partnership with AMPS. 

The database consists of, to date, over 2000 annotated and anonymized continuous ECG recordings that can be used by manufacturers and software development companies seeking to test the reliability of their equipment and algorithms before launching them on the market. The data is (and will continue to be) constantly updated.

Fabio Badilini, PhD, FACC, Chief Scientist and AMPS founder commented: "The joint project between myself and Dr. Maison-Blanche has been fruitful in one form or another for over a quarter of a century and I am delighted that we have now formalized his partnership with AMPS"". He added, "For AMPS and its customers it's an important milestone as Dr. Maison-Blanche's database represents an invaluable resource". Dr Pierre Maison-Blanche commented: "This database originated a long time ago from an idea to train and educate young cardiology fellows. Over time, it has grown to become a huge repository of clinically valuable recordings in standard clinical settings. In this era of patches worn for weeks and continuous ECG telemetry there is a need for improved analysis software which would benefit the management of patients affected by cardiac arrhythmia". 

This database will allow to establish standard metrics of accuracy (sensitivity and specificity and ROC curves) on large and clinically oriented sets of data.

The major features of the PMB-AMPS database include:

• Recordings acquired using digital Holter recorders at 200 Hz with an amplitude resolution of 10 µV
• The majority are 2-Leads recordings with an average recording length above 21h
• Recordings from patients referred for atrial arrhythmia management, including pre- and post-ablation recordings, with documented episodes of paroxysmal or permanent atrial fibrillation
• Recordings from patients referred for the documentation of symptoms with a 24h recording within normal limits.
• Recordings from patients referred for the documentation of symptoms with  a 24h recording showing a variety of cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial extrasystoles, ventricular extrasystoles, runs and episodes of atrio-ventricular block

For all recordings, ECG beat detection and arrhythmia analysis is automatically carried out using commercial software. This is followed by a dedicated and detailed cardiologist review which ensures that in all cases, at least 59 minutes per hour are properly edited (i.e. on a beat-to-beat basis). 

As of today, the database is available to all AMPS customers either in full or in specific subsets as required.