Recent Changes

This page lists recent changes in the wfdb package (since version 4.0.0) that may be relevant if you are upgrading from an older version of the package. For the complete history of changes in the package, please refer to the development repository on GitHub.

Version 4.3.1 (Feb 2026)

Add fix for Pandas 3.0

In Pandas 3.0, DataFrame.set_index() no longer accepts a raw numpy array as the keys argument. Adds fix by wrapping the index array in pd.Index().

Fix ADC formula

Fixes [formula for ADC gain](https://github.com/MIT-LCP/wfdb-python/pull/551).

Allow multifrequency signals to be written with expanded argument

Allow [expanded parameter in MultiRecord.wrsamp](https://github.com/MIT-LCP/wfdb-python/pull/555).

Date validation when saving multi-segment records

Adds validation check for date and time fields in headers when saving multi-segment records.

Version 4.3.0 (Apr 2025)

Bump Sphinx to 7.0.0

Bump Sphinx to 7.0.0

Integrate `fsspec` for reading WFDB files from the cloud

Enables reading WFDB files from cloud URLs

Version 4.2.0 (Jan 2025)

Add support for Numpy 2.0

Fixes were added to address [changes to type promotion](https://numpy.org/devdocs/numpy_2_0_migration_guide.html#changes-to-numpy-data-type-promotion) that led to overflow errors (e.g. https://github.com/MIT-LCP/wfdb-python/issues/493).

Fix UnboundLocalError in GQRS algorithm

Fixes the GQRS algorithm to address an UnboundLocalError.

Support write directory in `csv_to_wfdb`

write_dir can now be specified when calling csv_to_wfdb.

Use uv for for package management

Moves package management from poetry to uv.

Fix misordered arguments in `util.lines_to_file`

Fixes misordered arguments in util.lines_to_file.

Allow signals to be written with unique samples per frame

Adds capability to write signal with unique samps_per_frame to wfdb.io.wrsamp.

Allow expanded physical signal in `calc_adc_params`

Updates calc_adc_params to allow an expanded physical signal to be passed. Previously only a non-expanded signal was allowed.

Allow selection of channels when converting to EDF

Fixes the wfdb-to_edf() function to support an optional channels argument.

Migrates Ricker wavelet from SciPy to WFDB after deprecation

The Ricker wavelet (scipy.signal.ricker) was removed in SciPy v1.15, so the original implementation was migrated to the WFDB package.

Miscellaneous style and typing fixes

Various fixes were made to code style and handling of data types.

Version 4.1.2 (June 2023)

Handle more than 8 compressed signals in wrsamp

Previously, the package did not support writing of compressed records with more than 8 channels.

Use int64 instead of int for ann2rr

Fixes ‘np has no attribute np.int’ error raised when running ann2rr.

Version 4.1.1 (April 2023)

Remove upper bound on dependencies

Previously, the package provided restrictive caps on version number of dependencies. These caps have been removed.

Miscellaneous style and typing fixes

Various fixes were made to code style and handling of data types.

Version 4.1.0 (December 2022)

Converting a record into a DataFrame

The new method wfdb.Record.to_dataframe() can be used to convert signal data from a Record object into a Pandas DataFrame, which can then be manipulated using Pandas methods.

Locating signals in a multi-segment record

The new method wfdb.MultiRecord.contained_ranges() can be used to search for time intervals within a record that contain a specific channel. The method wfdb.MultiRecord.contained_combined_ranges() searches for time intervals that contain several specific channels at once.

Writing custom annotation symbols

The wfdb.wrann() function can now be used to write annotations with custom annotation types (symbol strings.) Custom annotation types must be defined using the custom_labels argument.

Correct rounding when converting floating-point signal data

When calling wfdb.wrsamp() with a p_signal argument, input values will be rounded to the nearest sample value rather than being truncated towards zero. The same applies to the wfdb.Record.adc() method.

Writing signals in compressed format

The wfdb.wrsamp() function, and the wfdb.Record.wrsamp() method, now support writing compressed signal files. To write a compressed file, set the fmt value to "508" (for an 8-bit channel), "516" (for a 16-bit channel), or "524" (for a 24-bit channel).

Decoding non-ASCII text in EDF files

The wfdb.io.convert.edf.read_edf() and wfdb.io.convert.edf.rdedfann() functions now take an optional argument encoding, which specifies the character encoding for text fields. ISO-8859-1 encoding is used by default, in contrast to older versions of the package which used UTF-8.

Bug fixes when writing signal metadata

When calling wfdb.Record.wrsamp(), the checksum and samples-per-frame fields in the header file will correctly match the signal data, rather than relying on attributes of the Record object.