How to Get Data from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database

The MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database is a set of 30-minute heart rhythm recordings (AKA “electrocardiograms” or “ECGs”) from 47 patients from 1975 to 1979. The data is from a range of healthy to heart-diseased patients and is useful for practicing analyses of the heart using code.

However, downloading and using the data is not straightforward. If you go to the download page, you’ll see a ZIP file and a bunch of .atr.hea, and other obscure file types.

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