T-Wave Alternans Challenge Database

@article{pollard_physionet_2026, title = {{PhysioNet} as a global platform for biomedical research}, volume = {1}, issn = {3005-0693}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s44360-026-00096-z}, doi = {10.1038/s44360-026-00096-z}, abstract = {Twenty-five years after its first public repository was established, the PhysioNet resource for biomedical and clinical data has enabled tens of thousands of research papers. Further efforts are ongoing to advance secure data sharing, community engagement and scalable research infrastructure.}, number = {8}, journal = {Nature Health}, author = {Pollard, Tom and Moody, Benjamin E. and Lehman, Li-wei H. and Gow, Brian J. and Fernandes, Chrystinne and Xie, Chen and Johnson, Alistair and Mark, Roger G. and Heldt, Thomas}, month = aug, year = {2026}, pages = {792--795},}

Abstract

This database has been assembled for the PhysioNet/Computers in Cardiology Challenge 2008. It contains 100 multichannel ECG records sampled at 500 Hz with 16 bit resolution over a ± 32 mV range. The subjects include patients with myocardial infarctions, transient ischemia, ventricular tachyarrhythmias, and other risk factors for sudden cardiac death, as well as healthy controls and synthetic cases with calibrated amounts of T-wave alternans.

Data Description

Specific information about individual records (which was withheld during the challenge) is now available on the 2008 Challenge project.

Since these records come from a variety of sources, some of them have been resampled and scaled from original recordings sampled at higher or lower resolution in order to present them in a uniform format here. In most cases, each record contains the standard 12 diagnostic ECG signals, but a few contain only 2 or 3 signals. Each record is approximately two minutes in duration.

Each record consists of 3 files in standard WFDB format:

• twann.hea: a short (text) header file that specifies the format of the record including the number and names of the signals.
• twann.dat: a long (binary) signal file containing the digitized signals.
• twann.qrs: a medium-length (binary) annotation file containing the times of occurrence of the QRS complexes within the record. Although a few of the records contain ectopic beats, all beats are marked within the .qrs files as if normal.

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