The BIDMC Congestive Heart Failure Database

This database includes long-term ECG recordings from 15 subjects (11 men, aged 22 to 71, and 4 women, aged 54 to 63) with severe congestive heart failure (NYHA class 3–4). This group of subjects was part of a larger study group receiving conventional medical therapy prior to receiving the oral inotropic agent, milrinone. Further details about the larger study group are available in the first reference cited above. A number of additional studies have made use of these recordings; see the additional references below.

The individual recordings are each about 20 hours in duration, and contain two ECG signals each sampled at 250 samples per second with 12-bit resolution over a range of ±10 millivolts. The original analog recordings were made at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital (now the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) using ambulatory ECG recorders with a typical recording bandwidth of approximately 0.1 Hz to 40 Hz. Annotation files (with the suffix .ecg) were prepared using an automated detector and have not been corrected manually.