Measurement 147 (2019) 106384

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Measurement
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

A study on ECG signal characterization and practical implementation of

some ECG characterization techniques
Ahilan Appathurai a,⇑, J. Jerusalin Carol b, C. Raja c, S.N. Kumar d, Ashy V. Daniel b,
A. Jasmine Gnana Malar e, A. Lenin Fred b, Sujatha Krishnamoorthy f
a
Department of ECE, Infant Jesus College of Engineering, Tuticorin, India
b
Department of CSE, Mar Ephraem College of Engineering and Technology, Marthandam, India
c
Department of ECE, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Vaddeswaram, A.P., India
d
Department of ECE, Mar Ephraem College of Engineering and Technology, Marthandam, India
e
Department of EEE, Arunachala College of Engineering for Women, Nagercoil, India
f
Department of CSE, Wenzhou Kean University, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The role of ECG is pivotal in medical field for the analysis of cardiac physiology and abnormalities. The
Received 11 October 2018 interpretation of ECG signal is performed by signal processing algorithms for diagnosis of cardiac dis-
Received in revised form 27 December 2018 eases. This work analyses filtering approaches, component extraction, classification and compression
Accepted 17 February 2019
algorithms for the ECG signal. The portable ECG systems are also analysed; results and discussion com-
Available online 27 May 2019
prises of IIR notch filter for the removal of power line interference, hybrid wavelet filter for removal of
baseline wander, FFT algorithm for R peak detection and hybrid filtering approach for the detection of
Keywords:
P, QRS and T components. The outcome of this research work is an aid for researchers developing novel
Cardiac disease
Power line interference
algorithms in ECG filtering, segmentation and classification. The algorithms are developed in Matlab
ECG 2015b and tested on fantasia database data sets.
Filtering Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Fourier transform
Wavelet transform

1. Introduction ment [4]. The electromagnetic interference degrades the signal

Today cardiac diseases are the root of cause of death in the
world [1]. The role of ECG is vital in the analysis of cardiac physi-
ology [2,3].The Electrocardiogram (ECG) records the electrical
activity of heart; the amplitude of signal is low ranging from 0.4
to 3 mv. The low magnitude value of ECG stress the importance
of appropriate filtering approach before further processing for bio-
logical analysis. The surface electrodes (Ag/AgCl) are widely used
for the acquisition of ECG signals and three lead configurations
are there; bipolar, unipolar and augmented unipolar. The source
of noise in ECG signals are baseline wander (also termed as low fre-
quency noise), power line interference, muscle noise and electro-
magnetic interference from other equipment. The frequency of
ECG signal ranges from 0.5 Hz to 100 Hz and artifacts play promi-
nent role analysis of ECG signals. The ECG signal is normally
depicted with the letters P,Q, R,S and T. The P and T represent
the low frequency components and QRS complex represents the
high frequency components. The EMI is the main source of power
line interference (PLI) in the connecting cables of ECG and equip-
⇑ Corresponding author.
and affects the minute features in the signal; PLI is also induced
due to variation in electrode impedance and stray current through
the cables and equipment.
The digital notch filters and adaptive filters are widely used for
the elimination of power line interference, however in [5], subtrac-
tion method was employed. The digital filter was applied in the lin-
ear segments of ECG signal for the removal of interferences and is
subtracted from the input signal, where ever non-linear segments
are observed. The source of EMI coupling is of mainly two types;
capacitive and inductive [6]. The capacitive coupling is due to the
presence of capacitance between the circuits and inductive cou-
pling is due to the inductance between the conductors. The PLI is
mainly contributed by inductive coupling; proper shielding, avoid-
ing loose connection in wires and appropriate placement of elec-
trodes can minimize the PLI. The patient movements, dirt in lead
wires/electrodes and changes in electrode skin impedance causes
baseline wander [7,8]. The effect of baseline wander is dominant
in holter monitoring, online monitoring in moving vehicle (ambu-
lance) and exercise ECG. The frequency of baseline wander is less
than 1.0 Hz and varies during exercise. The burst noise is also
observed in ECG signal and it can be modelled as additive white

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.measurement.2019.02.040
0263-2241/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384
Gaussian noise [9]. Some of the types of burst noise are electrode
pop noise [10], electrode motion artifact, electro surgical noise
and instrumentation noise [11] etc. The ECG is used to assist imag-
ing modality such as SPECT for the analysis of myocardial perfusion
and left ventricular function simultaneously [12]. The CT coronary
angiography (CTCA) and ECG-gated myocardial perfusion SPECT is
used for the diagnosis of ischemic heart disease [12].
The long short term memory network and CNN was coupled
together for the classification of ECG signals, diagnostic accuracy
of 99.85% was obtained [13]. The discrete cosine transform with
KNN classifier was found to be efficient for the cardiac diseases
analysis, the coefficients selection was done by Locality Preserving
Projection (LPP) technique, DCT performance was better than Dis-
crete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Empirical Mode Decomposi-
tion (EMD) [14].The deep convolution neural network was found
to be efficient in the classification of normal and abnormal heart
rhythms [15]. The variational mode decomposition technique
was found to be efficient for the characterization of cardiac
arrhythmias, the transform domain analysis can detect the closely
space frequencies [16]. In [17], a detailed study has been per-
formed on the segmentation algorithms for the extraction of fidu-
cial points on the ECG signal. The algorithms that relies on NI
LABVIEW software was used for the characterization and classifica-
tion of ECG signals [18]. The machine learning clustering algo-
rithms with markers were found to be efficient for the detection
of ECG phenotypes in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy [19]. The
wavelet packet decomposition with extracted nonlinear features
was found to be robust in the characterization of cardiac diseases
[20]. The flexible analytic wavelet transform with least square
SVM was found to be efficient for the classification of coronary
artery diseases [21]. The ECG signals were found to be effective
as a biometric trait for IOT applications [22].
In this work, the widely used filtering and analysis techniques
for the ECG are discussed initially; some of the hardware
approaches for the implementation of ECG system are also dis-
cussed. Results and discussion depicts IIR notch filter for the reduc-
tion of power line interference, hybrid wavelet domain filter for the
elimination of baseline wander, fast fourier transform algorithm
for R peak detection and hybrid filtering approach for P, QRS and
T wave detection and finally conclusions are drawn.
2. Related works
2.1. ECG filtering approaches
The adaptive band pass filter was found to be efficient for the
detection of QRS complex and tested on 24 h MIT/BIH arrhythmia
database [23]. The band pass filter eliminates false spurious signals
generated due to various interferences; the algorithm was devel-
oped in Z80 assembly language with an accuracy of 99.3%. In
[24], different digital filtering approaches for ECG signals were ana-
lyzed. The wavelet domain wiener filter generates efficient filtering
results for the real time data from 192 cases obtained from 8 chan-
nels comprising of normal and pathological signals [25]. The two
stage filtering based on time frequency approach improves the
denoising; the selection of wavelet basis function is vital, short
length for the detection of QRS complex and medium length for
the detection of P and T sections of ECG signal. The wavelet trans-
form detects the QRS complex accurately; db3 wavelet generates
good results and sym wavelet generates poor results [26].
The wavelet filtering approach was efficient for long term anal-
ysis of ECG signal, computation complexity is low. The notch filter
was found to be efficient for the noise generated due to power line
interferences and high pass filter (DC notch filter) was proposed for
baseline removal [27]. The simplicity in the filter design makes it
suitable for other applications like pulse oximetry and respiratory
signal extraction. The digital FIR equiripple notch filter was found
to be efficient for the power line interference; FDA tool in MATLAB
was used for the design and doesn’t require any reference signal for
processing [28]. The extended kalman filter was found to be profi-
cient for the filtering of low SNR ECG signals especially the fetal
signals and was tested on synthetic ECG signal constructed from
nonlinear dynamic model [29].
The extended kalman filter was found to be proficient in the
extraction of ECG signal from noisy data. The restoration modal
is based on the combination of extended kalman filter and dynamic
model of synthetic ECG signal [30]. An adaptive recurrent filter was
employed for the filtering of ECG signals for the analysis of
Arrhythmia problems [31]. In adaptive recurrent filter, the coeffi-
cients are adaptable so that the impulse response of the desired
signal is obtained. It minimizes the mean square error between
the noisy ECG input and reference pulse. The reference pulse is
positioned in the beginning of QRS complex. The morphology of
the ECG signal components changes during arrhythmia and can
detect the ectopic beats, detection of P waves in conduction blocks,
detection of atrial fibrillation and monitoring the performance of
pacemaker. The kalman filter with adaptive noise covariance esti-
mation was proposed for the filtering of ECG signals, the increase
in SNR with preservation of morphological variations was observed
[32].
The moving average filter is a type of FIR filter that is applied to
a set of data samples by generating a mean of different samples on
the full data set [33].
The expression for moving average of samples is expressed as
follows
xðn  2Þ þ xðn  1Þ þ xðnÞ þ xðn þ 1Þ þ xðn þ 2Þ
xðnÞ ¼
5
where xðnÞ is the original signal.
The ECG signals acquired during MRI scans were severely
affected by noise; nonlinear filters are employed for the restoration
of ECG signal [34]. The adaptive filter based on dynamic structure
was proposed for the filtering of ECG EMG and EEG signals. Effi-
cient results were produced when compared with the classical
adaptive filter [35]. The fast fourier transform filtering along with
artificial neural network was found to be efficient for the detection
of cardiac diseases [36].
The steps in the fourier transform filtering of ECG signal is as
follows
The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of noisy ECG signal e(n)
into n sample points is as follows
X
N1
Y ðkÞ ¼ eðnÞW nk
N ; 0  k  N1
n¼0
Y (K) is the amplitude of ECG signal and the time series compo-
nent h(t) is windowed with the window function to obtain the
resultant spectrum as follows
Z 1
Eðf Þ ¼ eðt Þei2pft dt
1
The DFT of noisy ECG signal e½kT  in terms of the generalized
gaussian function is as follows
h mi X N1  
K þ m 2p22 m2 i2pmj
Y k; ¼ E e n e N
NT NT
n¼0
m
where E HT is fourier transform of frequency domain noisy ECG
signal.
The Undecimated Wavelet Transform (UWT) based on Daube-
chies (D6) wavelet efficiently filters the ECG signal and the algo-
rithm was developed in Lab View software [37]. The wavelet
 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384
transform has inevitable role in ECG signal filtering and compres-
sion [38].
The continuous wavelet transform of the function h(x) is as
follows
Z 1
W w ðs; sÞ ¼ hðxÞws;s ðxÞdx
1
where
1 x  s
ws;s ðxÞ ¼ pffiffi w
s s
The discrete wavelet transform of the function is expressed in
the same form continuous wavelet transform except that DWT
uses scale and position in powers of 2 as follows
! Analysis (ICA) was found to be better than PCA in the abnormality
1 x  kso soj
wj;k ðxÞ ¼ qffiffiffiffi w
soj soj
The value of s and s ares ¼ 2 j , s ¼ k  2 j and ðj; kÞ 2 Z 2 as shown
in the equation.
2.2. ECG characterization approaches
The classical feature extraction technique (mean, variance, fre-
quency, energy) was used for the classification of ECG signals for
the diagnosis of arrhythmias [39]. The efficiency of classification
was performed by Anova statistical tool and computation com-
plexity was low. Apart from the cardiac activity, respiratory rate
monitoring and ventricular triggering can also be determined and
continuous monitoring is required for the patients in postoperative
care unit [40]. The synthetic ECG signal was generated by a novel
dynamic model based on differential equation that aids for the sta-
tistical analysis of clinical ECG signals [41]. The morphological
parameters of ECG signal are user defined with respiratory sinus
arrhythmia at the high frequencies (HFs) and Mayer waves at the
low frequencies (LFs) together with the LF/HF ratio are also incor-
porated in the model. The hidden semi markov model efficiently
segments the ECG signal into its constituent parts [42]. The proba-
bilistic approach was proficient when compared with the classical
threshold based methods. The higher order statistics are employed
Fig. 1. First and second column represents the input and IIR notch filtering output corresponding to the ECG data set O1.txt and O2.txt.
3
for the determination of respiration rate from single channel ECG
signal [43]. The physioNet data base signals are used and require
only R wave detection. The ECG characteristic components are
extracted by multi scale morphological derivative (MMD)
transform-based singularity detector; better results are produced
when compared with the wavelet transform-based and adaptive
thresholding-based techniques [44].
The ECG signal recording help for the prediction of defibrillation
in patients with ventricular fibrillation (VF) [45]. The irregularity
nature is observed in ECG signals of VF cases that depicts the chao-
tic nature of working of heart. The online ECG signal recording was
performed with the defibrillation by monophasic defibrillator. The
principal component analysis (PCA) is found to be effective for the
baseline wander removal of ECG signal; Independent Component
detection, hybrid combination of ICA and PCA was better in the
removal of artifacts [46]. The image form of ECG was proficient
for the accurate determination of periodicity; pixel dithering
increases the thickness of R peaks, when trace is scanned or ren-
dered in videos [47]. The pixel thickness information was utilized
in the estimation of periodicity; accuracy was good for bradycardia
and tachycardia detection. The feed forward back propagation neu-
ral network was employed for the detection of poor ECG signals,
preprocessing was performed by wavelet domain filter [48]. The
Daubechies wavelet was found to be efficient in the filtering of
ECG signal; T-wave abnormality can be analyzed without the need
for T-wave end point identification. A detailed study has been per-
formed on the acquisition and challenges in the analysis of fetal
ECG signals in [49]. The nonlinear filtering approach based on
multi resolution wavelet filter effective filters the ECG signal effec-
tively on signals from MIT-BIH database [50]. The data mining
clustering and classification algorithms based on weka system
was used for the analysis of ECG signals [51]. The ECG signal has
its role in security authentication in biometrics system; the ECG
signal is also a signature like finger print and retina and is unique
for each individual [52]. The MIT/BIH Arrhythmia database was
used and correlation coefficient was used for identification. In
[53], a detailed study on ECG feature extraction techniques based
on fuzzy logic, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Genetic Algo-
rithm(GA), Support Vector Machines (SVM) are analyzed.
4 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384

The empirical mode decomposition algorithm was used for the
detection of arrhythmia in ECG signals [54]. The algorithm was val-
idated on MIT-BIH data base and EMD algorithm decomposes sig-
nal into finite number of Intrinsic Mode functions (IMFs) and band
pass butter worth filter was used for filtering the components. The
neural network based ECG signal analysis accuracy relies on the
training employed. The features like amplitudes, durations, gradi-
ents, polarity are extracted and normalized within the range from
0 to 1 [55]. The training accuracy is 85.7%, validation accuracy is
71.4% and the testing accuracy is 71.4%. In [56], a detailed analysis
has been made on the ECG morphology analysis using Artificial
Neural Network (ANN), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Linear Dis-
criminant Analysis (LDA), Kth Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Hidden
Markov Model (HMM). The wavelet transform was employed for
filtering of ECG signal and the compression is performed by SPIHT
algorithm [57]. Efficient results are produced on MIT-BIH
polysomnographic and MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. The wavelet
based watermarking and compression scheme for ECG signal
reduces the storage capacity and improves the security in the
transmission [58]. The role of compression algorithms is vital in
teleradiology for data transmission. The adaptive difference pulse
code modulation generates efficient results than DPCM [59]. The

Fig. 2. First and second column represents the input and IIR notch filtering output corresponding to the ECG data set O3.txt and O4.txt.

Fig. 3. First and second column represents the input and IIR notch filtering output corresponding to the ECG data set Y1.txt and Y2.txt.
 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384 5

compression plays vita role in the transmission of ECG signal for
telemedicine application [60]. A novel compression scheme termed
as compressive sensing reconstruct the signal in the receiver side
with few samples. Prior to compression, the signal is transformed
into wavelet domain and validated on MIT-BIH Arrhythmia
Database.
The preprocessing was performed by FIR least squares filter;
feature extraction was performed by autoregressive (AR) and mul-
tivariate autoregressive (MVAR) models [61]. The classification
was done by quadratic discriminant function (QDF) and multilayer
perceptron (MLP). The band pass filter was used for the removal of
noise and for feature extraction; discrete wavelet transform is
employed [62]. The machine learning SVM algorithm was used
for the classification and validated on MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Data-
base. The artital fibrillation is the root cause of arrhythmia causing
death in adults. The feature extraction was performed by Auto
regressive (AR) model and classification was done by kernel Sup-
port Vector Machine (KSVM) and K- Nearest Neighbor (KNN)

Fig. 4. First and second column represents the input and IIR notch filtering output corresponding to the ECG data set Y3.txt and Y4.txt.

Fig. 5. Hybrid filtering result (Wavelet domain + Average filter) corresponding to the ECG data set O1.txt and Y1.txt.
6 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384

Fig. 6. Wavelet decomposition (d1, d2, a1, a2) corresponding to the ECG data O1.txt.

Fig. 7. Wavelet decomposition (d3, d4, a3, a4) corresponding to the ECG data O1.txt.
 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384 7

[63]. The KNN with burg’s technique generates good classification
accuracy. In [64], two algorithms are proposed for the detection of
QRS complex. The first algorithm is based on averaging and adap-
tive threshold uses the state logic to determine the different peaks
of the signal. The feature extraction comprises of statistical, mor-
phological and transform based features for ECG signals [65]. The
Pan Tompkins algorithm was used for the detection of R peaks;
walsh hadmard transform generates zero distortion. The KNN clas-
sifier generates good classification accuracy and was validated on
MIT-BIH arrhythmias database. The discrete wavelet transform

Fig. 8. Wavelet decomposition (d1, d2, a1, a2) corresponding to the ECG data Y1.txt.

Fig. 9. Wavelet decomposition (d3, d4, a3, a4) corresponding to the ECG data Y2.txt.
8 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384

Fig. 10. FFT filtering and R peak detection of sample 1.

Fig. 11. FFT filtering and R peak detection of sample 2.

 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384 9

along with run length coding generates efficient results for the
compression of ECG signals applicable for telemedicine applica-
tions [66]. A hybrid algorithm comprising of linearization and prin-
cipal component analysis (PCA) was applied for the detection of R
waves and QRS complex [67]. The local adaptive filter generates
satisfactory results for the denoising of ECG signal [68]. The filter-
ing of ECG signal was performed by rbio3.7 wavelet and for classi-
fication deep convolution neural network was employed [69]. In
[70], a study has been performed on different feature extraction
and classification techniques for ECG signal. A digital elliptical
band pass filter was constructed by cascading low pass and high
pass filter for the removal of baseline wander and muscle noise
[67]. For feature extraction, wavelet and 1D local binary pattern
was utilized and classification was performed by extreme learning
machine. The normal and abnormal ECG signal was subjected to
feature extraction by Gray level Co-occurrence matrix and for clas-
sification; Support Vector Machine (SVM) was employed [71]. A 16
layer 1D convolution neural network can efficiently classify the
normal and abnormal heart rhythms; the results were superior
when compared with recurrent neural networks and spectrogram
learning [70].
2.3. Portable ECG systems
The ECG monitoring software was developed for smartphone;
wavelet algorithm was used to detect the QRS complex and can
classify 14 types of arrhythmia disease [72]. A telemonitoring PC
based system receives the signal by GPRS, process the signal and
communicate to the user. The real-world ECG signal data set was
formulated for the wearable computer comprising of different
cases [73]. The dataset includes 260 recordings, eight use cases
for baseline wander, twenty eight use cases for motion artifact
and 16 use cases for power line interference. The fluctuation char-
acteristics of ECG signal is analyzed in [73], for the non-shockable
arrhythmias like sinus rhythm, the function has Gaussian charac-
teristics, whereas in the case of shockable, the ventricular fibrilla-
tion signal depicts an excellent agreement with the Bramwell-
Holdsworth-Pinton (BHP) probability density function. A portable

Fig. 12. R peak detection plot corresponding to sample 1 and sample 2.

Fig. 13. (a) Original input signal, (b) Low pass filter output, (c) High pass filter (d) Derivative filter.
10 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384

ARM processor based ECG system was developed for the real time
analysis of ECG signals [74]. For the classification of signals SVM
was employed, the signals are classified into normal, atrial fibrilla-
tion and myocardial ischemia. A six lead ECG acquisition system
with instrumentation amplifier based on CMOS process was pro-
posed, second order unity-gain Sallen-Key high pass and low pass
filter was used to remove unwanted noise and any DC offset volt-
ages [75]. A wearable ECG system was developed for acquisition of
signals from horses, Stationary Wavelet Movement Artifact Reduc-
tion (SWMAR) algorithm was proposed for the elimination of
motion artifacts [76]. The reliability of the portable ECG monitor-
ing system needs reliable hardware platform for various algorithm
implementations [77]. The interfacing part from input to output
need reliable ADC [78]. Proper ground to bounce noise mitigation
is needed for real time implementation [79]. FPGA based compres-
sion helps in real time processing with large volume of ECG data
[80].
A hand held ECG device was proposed for the detection of atrial
fibrillation based on random forest classifier, overall score of 82.6%
was obtained [81]. A portable micro electro mechanical system
(MEMS) was developed for mobile applications that measures the
glucose level and ECG signals for the analysis and transfer of medical
data [82]. A portable cardio analyser was proposed for the analysis
of ECG signal for e-health applications [83]. A wearable ECG device
was developed for the analysis of cardiac disorders, four machine
learning algorithms comprising of support vector machine (SVM),

Fig. 14. (a) Moving average filter output, (b) Filtered ECG signal, (c) Filtered ECG signal with P, QRS and T markings.
 A. Appathurai et al. / Measurement 147 (2019) 106384
K-nearest neighbour (KNN), naïve Bayes (NB), and logistic regres-
sion (LR) were used, KNN gives superior accuracy of 65.37% for men-
tal fatigue detection [84]. The wireless ECG system based on zigbee
was developed for home applications and transfer of patient data to
remote places [85]. A real time ECG signal processing software was
developed for arrhythmia detection on mobile phones; the algo-
rithms used for analysis comprises of moving average, Pan Tomp-
kins and Wavelet techniques [86]. The low cost portable ECG and
EEG systems were developed for the acquisition of signals and a
database DREAMER was proposed for the emotion recognition
[87]. A portable wearable device was proposed for the measurement
of heart rate variability; data obtained from Microsoft band (MS
band) was framed in the JSON format for cloud communication
[88]. The linear template subtraction algorithm was proposed for
the detection of fetal heart rate for portable fetal heart rate monitors
[89]. A portable ECG system was developed for the acquisition of
ECG signal, heart rate and respiration rate [90].
3. Results and discussion
This research work analyzes some of the widely used filtering
algorithms and QRS detection algorithm on fantasia ECG database.
The fantasia ECG data set comprises of 10 cases; 5 young (21–
34 years old) and 5 elderly (21–34 years old) of healthy subjects.
The power line noise was characterized by sinusoidal signal of fre-
quency 50 Hz and amplitude of 0.3mv. The IIR notch filter elimi-
nates 50 Hz power line noise, filter coefficients was determined
by pole replacement method. The results of IIR notch filter corre-
sponding to the inputs from fantasia ECG data set are depicted in
Figs. 1–4.
In the design of IIR notch filter, the parameter W0 represents the
position of notch and its value lies between o and 1. The value ‘1’
depicts G in radians. The bandwidth at 3 dB point is represented
as bw. In this work, W0 = 50/(250/2) is chosen with bw = W0. The
IIR notch filter was found to effective for the removal of power line
interference. The baseline wander is also a vital problem and for
that hybrid wavelet filtering generates efficient results.
In the hybrid wavelet filtering approach, initially the ECG signal
is filtered by IIR notch filter. The signal is then decomposed by db6
wavelet with decomposition level of 10. The wavelet decomposi-
tion of IIR notch output is depicted in Figs. 4 and 5. After the
decomposition by wavelets, glitches are present in the output;
hence moving average filter was applied as a post processing stage
for the refinement of output. The input signal and filtered signals
are depicted in Fig. 5. The wavelet decomposition components of
signals are depicted in Figs. 6–9. The post processing stage
improves the performance of peak detection.
For R peak detection, fast fourier transform was applied for the
denoising of ECG signal and here two pass filtering was performed.
The R peak detection was done by windowing filter and the filter
coefficients are adjusted such that, only maximum point in the win-
dow is selected and the remaining points are discarded. The filtering
results for the two sample ECG data sets in.dat format are depicted
in Figs. 10 and 11. The final R peak detected plots are depicted in
Fig. 12. For the detection of P, QRS and T components, hybrid filter-
ing comprising of low pass, high pass and derivative filter are
sequentially applied. The result is then normalized and subjected
to moving average filter for the removal of glitches. The threshold-
ing is also applied in the post processing stage for the refinement of
output. The results are depicted in Figs. 13 and 14.
4. Conclusion
This work describes the filtering and characterization
approaches for ECG signal analysis. The ECG signal analysis is vital
11
for the analysis of cardiac pathophysiology and disorders. The
noise filtering has to be carried out before any subsequent process
like extraction of P, QRS and T components, classification and com-
pression. Some of the portable ECG systems and its necessity are
also described in this work. The outcome of this work will be an
aid for the researchers working on ECG signal processing for the
development of novel algorithms. The future works will be analysis
of filtering and classification algorithms for various cardiac dis-
eases on real time and standard database.
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