Getting Started

Requirements

Installation

  1. Clone the repo or download the source code.

  2. From matlab, run the mhrv_init function from the root of the repo. This function will:

    • Check for the presence of the WFDB tools in your system PATH. If WFDB tools are not detected, it will attempt to automatically download them for you into the folder bin/wfdb under the repository root.

    • Set up your MATLAB path to include the code from this toolbox.

Notes about matlab’s pwd and path

Matlab maintains a PWD, or “present working directory”. It’s the folder you see at the top of the interface, containing the files you see in the file explorer pane. Type pwd at the matlab command prompt to see it’s value.

Additionally, matlab maintains a PATH variable, containing a list of folders in which it searches for function definitions (similar to the shell PATH concept). Type path at the matlab command prompt to see it’s value.

You don’t need to change your pwd to the root of the repo folder for the toolbox to work. You can simple run the mhrv_init function from your current pwd, and it will take care of updating matlab’s path. For example, if you cloned or downloaded the toolbox in the folder /Users/myname/mhrv/, you can run the following command from the matlab prompt:

run /Users/myname/mhrv/mhrv_init.m

After this the toolbox will be ready to use, regardless of your pwd.

Manual WFDB Installation (Optional)

The above steps should be enough to get most users started. If however you don’t want mhrv_init to download the WFDB tools for you, or the automatic installation fails for some reason, you can install them yourself.

Once you have the binaries, place them in some folder on your $PATH or somewere under the repo’s root folder (bin/wfdb would be a good choice as it’s .gitignored) and they will be found and used automatically. Or, if you would like to manually specify a path outside the repo which contains the WFDB binaries (e.g. /usr/local/bin for a homebrew install), you can edit defaults.yml and set the mhrv.paths.wfdb_path variable to the desired path.

For linux users it’s recommended to install from source as the binaries provided on the PhysioNet website are very outdated.