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<h2>Compiling ECGSYN</h2>
<p>
Sources for the C version of <a href="../">ECGSYN</a> are <a
href="src/">here</a>. Note, however, that two additional files are required in
order to compile ECGSYN. These files (<tt>dfour1.c</tt> and <tt>ran1.c</tt>)
are those included in <a href="http://www.nr.com" target="other">Numerical
Recipes in C</a>. Before attempting to compile ECGSYN, obtain these two files
from Numerical Recipes in C and place them in the same directory as the other
sources. (These files are not provided here because they cannot be freely
redistributed.)
<p>
If you cannot obtain <tt>dfour1.c</tt> and <tt>ran1.c</tt>, several
alternatives are available, including ready-to-run executable versions of
ECGSYN for <a href="linux/">GNU/Linux</a>, <a href="solaris/">Solaris</a>, and
<a href="windows/">MS-Windows</a>, as well as <a
href="../Matlab/">Matlab/Octave</a> and <a href="../Java/">Java</a>
implementations of ECGSYN.
<p>
On most platforms, including GNU/Linux, MacOS X, and Unix, compile ECGSYN
by typing
<pre>
make
</pre>
in a terminal window. This will also work under MS-Windows if you have
installed the free <a href="http://www.cygwin.com" target="other">Cygwin/gcc
development toolkit</a>. If you wish to use another compiler under MS-Windows,
you are on your own.
<h2>Running ECGSYN</h2>
<p>
The executable version is named <tt>ecgsyn</tt> (or, under MS-Windows,
<tt>ecgsyn.exe</tt>). Once you have this file, move it into any directory in
your PATH and run it by typing
<pre>
ecgsyn
</pre>
in a terminal window. You may add options (switches) to the '<tt>ecgsyn</tt>'
command; the option '<tt>$</tt>', as in
<pre>
ecgsyn $
</pre>
starts ECGSYN in interactive mode, as shown below:
<pre>
>> ecgsyn $
ECGSYN: A program for generating a realistic synthetic ECG
Copyright (c) 2003 by Patrick McSharry & Gari Clifford. All rights reserved.
O Name of output data file "ecgsyn.dat"
n Approximate number of heart beats 256
s ECG sampling frequency [Hz] 256
S Internal Sampling frequency [Hz] 256
a Amplitude of additive uniform noise [mV] 0
h Heart rate mean [bpm] 60
H Heart rate standard deviation [bpm] 1
f Low frequency [Hz] 0.1
F High frequency [Hz] 0.25
v Low frequency standard deviation [Hz] 0.01
V High frequency standard deviation [Hz] 0.01
q LF/HF ratio 0.5
R Seed 1
(Type ? for Help)
->
</pre>
<p>
At the prompt, you can then type <tt>?</tt> for help, or simply specify each
parameter that you want to change by typing the corresponding option letter (in
the first column above) followed by a space and the new value, then
<enter>. To review the current settings, enter a blank line. After you
have modified all the parameters you want, type = followed by <enter> to
run the program. You may also specify the parameters in a file called
<tt>ecgsyn.opt</tt>, which is automatically read (if it exists) the next time
you run the program.
<p>
Any of the options can also be entered directly on the command line, by
prefixing the option letter with '<tt>-</tt>', as in:
<pre>
ecgsyn -h 80 -n 100
</pre>
(which would create output at a mean heart rate of 80 bpm, lasting for about
100 beats).
<p>
The source files <tt>opt.c</tt> and <tt>opt.h</tt> provide the option
interpreter for ECGSYN; they were written by James Theiler. For additional
information, and for the most recent version of <tt>opt</tt>, see
<a href="http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~jt/Software/"
target="other"><tt>http://nis-www.lanl.gov/~jt/Software/</tt></a>.
<h2>Interpreting ECGSYN's output</h2>
<p>
Unless you have changed the name of the output file with the '<tt>O</tt>'
parameter, you will find the synthetic ECG written to a text file called
<tt>ecgsyn.dat</tt>. Click <a href="../sample-output/">here</a> for a sample
of ECGSYN output and for a description of the format of this file.
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