The project for the development of the European ST-T annotated Database originated from a 'Concerted Action' on Ambulatory Monitoring, set up by the European Community in 1985. The goal was to prototype an ECG database for assessing the quality of ambulatory ECG monitoring (AECG) systems. After the 'concerted action', the development of the full database was coordinated by the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa and the Thoraxcenter of Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Thirteen research groups from eight countries provided AECG tapes and annotated beat by beat the selected 2-channel records, each 2 h in duration. ST segment (ST) and T-wave (T) changes were identified and their onset, offset and peak beats annotated in addition to QRSs, beat types, rhythm and signal quality changes. In 1989, the European Society of Cardiology sponsored the remainder of the project. Recently the 90 records were completed and stored on CD-ROM. The records include 372 ST and 423 T changes. In cooperation with the Biomedical Engineering Centre of MIT (developers of the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database), the annotation scheme was revised to be consistent with both MIT-BIH and American Heart Association formats.

The long-term ST database is the result of a multinational research effort. The goal was to develop a challenging and realistic research resource for development and evaluation of automated systems to detect transient ST segment changes in electrocardiograms and for supporting basic research into the mechanisms and dynamics of transient myocardial ischaemia. Twenty-four hour ambulatory ECG records were selected from routine clinical practice settings in the USA and Europe, between 1994 and 2000, on the basis of occurrence of ischaemic and non-ischaemic ST segment changes. Human expert annotators used newly developed annotation protocols and a specially developed interactive graphic editor tool (SEMIA) that supported paperless editing of annotations and facilitated international co-operation via the Internet. The database contains 86 two- and three-channel 24 h annotated ambulatory records from 80 patients and is stored on DVD-ROMs. The database annotation files contain ST segment annotations of transient ischaemic (1155) and heart-rate related ST episodes and annotations of non-ischaemic ST segment events related to postural changes and conduction abnormalities. The database is intended to complement the European Society of Cardiology ST-T database and the MIT-BIH and AHA arrhythmia databases. It provides a comprehensive representation of 'real-world' data, with numerous examples of transient ischaemic and non-ischaemic ST segment changes, arrhythmias, conduction abnormalities, axis shifts, noise and artifacts.

Abstract. The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS), on-board the European ENVIronmental SATellite (ENVISAT) launched on 1 March 2002, is a middle infrared Fourier Transform spectrometer measuring the atmospheric emission spectrum in limb sounding geometry. The instrument is capable to retrieve the vertical distribution of temperature and trace gases, aiming at the study of climate and atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, and at applications to data assimilation and weather forecasting.Correspondence to: U. Cortesi (u.cortesi@ifac.cnr.it) MIPAS operated in its standard observation mode for approximately two years, from July 2002 to March 2004, with scans performed at nominal spectral resolution of 0.025 cm −1 and covering the altitude range from the mesosphere to the upper troposphere with relatively high vertical resolution (about 3 km in the stratosphere). Only reduced spectral resolution measurements have been performed subsequently. MIPAS data were re-processed by ESA using updated versions of the Instrument Processing Facility (IPF v4.61 and v4.62) (and, to a lesser extent, v4.62) O 3 VMR profiles and a comprehensive set of correlative data, including observations from ozone sondes, ground-based lidar, FTIR and microwave radiometers, remote-sensing and in situ instruments on-board stratospheric aircraft and balloons, concurrent satellite sensors and ozone fields assimilated by the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting.A coordinated effort was carried out, using common criteria for the selection of individual validation data sets, and similar methods for the comparisons. This enabled merging the individual results from a variety of independent reference measurements of proven quality (i.e. well characterized error budget) into an overall evaluation of MIPAS O 3 data quality, having both statistical strength and the widest spatial and temporal coverage. Collocated measurements from ozone sondes and ground-based lidar and microwave radiometers of the Network for the Detection Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) were selected to carry out comparisons with time series of MIPAS O 3 partial columns and to identify groups of stations and time periods with a uniform pattern of ozone differences, that were subsequently used for a vertically resolved statistical analysis. The results of the comparison are classified according to synoptic and regional systems and to altitude intervals, showing a generally good agreement within the comparison error bars in the upper and middle stratosphere. Significant differences emerge in the lower stratosphere and are only partly explained by the larger contributions of horizontal and vertical smoothing differences and of collocation errors to the total uncertainty. Further results obtained from a purely statistical analysis of the same data set from NDACC ground-based lidar stations, as well as from additional ozone soundings at middle latitudes and from NDACC ground-based FTIR measurements, confirm the validity of MIPAS O 3 profil...

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