Adaptive filter for event-related bioelectric signals using animpulse correlated reference input: comparison with signal averagingtechniques

Many bioelectric signals result from the electrical response of physiological systems to an impulse that can be internal (ECG signals) or external (evoked potentials). In this paper an adaptive impulse correlated filter (AICF) for event-related signals that are time-locked to a stimulus is presented. This filter estimates the deterministic component of the signal and removes the noise uncorrelated with the stimulus, even if this noise is colored, as in the case of evoked potentials. The filter needs two inputs: the signal (primary input) and an impulse correlated with the deterministic component (reference input). We use the LMS algorithm to adjust the weights in the adaptive process. First, we show that the AICF is equivalent to exponentially weighted averaging (EWA) when using the LMS algorithm. A quantitative analysis of the signal-to-noise ratio improvement, convergence, and misadjustment error is presented. A comparison of the AICF with ensemble averaging (EA) and moving window averaging (MWA) techniques is also presented. The adaptive filter is applied to real high-resolution ECG signals and time-varying somatosensory evoked potentials.     

Neural-network-based adaptive matched filtering for QRS detection

We have developed an adaptive matched filtering algorithm based upon an artificial neural network (ANN) for QRS detection. We use an ANN adaptive whitening filter to model the lower frequencies of the ECG which are inherently nonlinear and nonstationary. The residual signal which contains mostly higher frequency QRS complex energy is then passed through a linear matched filter to detect the location of the QRS complex. We developed an algorithm to adaptively update the matched filter template from the detected QRS complex in the ECG signal itself so that the template can be customized to an individual subject. This ANN whitening filter is very effective at removing the time-varying, nonlinear noise characteristic of ECG signals. Using this novel approach, the detection rate for a very noisy patient record in the MIT/BIH arrhythmia database is 99.5%, which compares favorably to the 97.5% obtained using a linear adaptive whitening filter and the 96.5% achieved with a bandpass filtering method.     

QRS Detection Based on Morphological Filter and Energy Envelope for Applications in Body Sensor Networks

Emerging body sensor networks (BSN) provide solutions for continuous health monitoring at anytime and from anywhere. The implementation of these monitoring solutions requires wearable sensor devices and thus creates new technology challenges in both software and hardware. This paper presents a QRS detection method for wearable Electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor in body sensor networks. The success of proposed method is based on the combination of two computationally efficient procedures, i.e., single-scale mathematical morphological (MM) filter and approximated envelope. The MM filter removes baseline wandering, impulsive noise and the offset of DC component while the approximated envelope enhances the QRS complexes. The performance of the algorithm is verified with standard MIT-BIH arrhythmia database as well as exercise ECG data. It achieves a low detection error rate of 0.42% based on the MIT-BIH database.     

On detecting the presence of fetal R-wave using the moving averagedmagnitude difference algorithm

An efficient algorithm detecting the presence of a fetal QRS complex is presented. The proposed fetal QRS detection method computes the averaged magnitude of the difference between the fetal ECG signal and the reference signal to detect the fetal QRS event. The detected fetal QRS complexes are exponentially averaged to generate the template signal which can track the slowly varying shape of the fetal ECG signal. As an effort to obtain improved detection performances, two approaches of normalizing the fetal ECG signal and the template are considered.     

A Real-Time QRS Detection Algorithm

We have developed a real-time algorithm for detection of the QRS complexes of ECG signals. It reliably recognizes QRS complexes based upon digital analyses of slope, amplitude, and width. A special digital bandpass filter reduces false detections caused by the various types of interference present in ECG signals. This filtering permits use of low thresholds, thereby increasing detection sensitivity. The algorithm automatically adjusts thresholds and parameters periodically to adapt to such ECG changes as QRS morphology and heart rate. For the standard 24 h MIT/BIH arrhythmia database, this algorithm correctly detects 99.3 percent of the QRS complexes.     

New Concepts for PVC Detection

A new scheme is proposed for the detection of premature ventricular beats, which is a vital function in rhythm monitoring of cardiac patients. A transformation based on the first difference of the digitized electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is developed for the detection and delineation of QRS complexes. The method for classifying the abnormal complexes from the normal ones is based on the concepts of minimum phase and signal length. The parameters of a linear discriminant function obtained from a training feature vector set are used to classify the complexes. Results of application of the scheme to ECG of two arrhythmia patients are presented.     

基于小波变换与形态学运算的ECG自适应滤波算法

针对ECG信号常用滤波算法存在的缺陷,提出了基于小波变换与形态学运算的自适应滤波新算法。该算法利用形态学滤波器去除基线漂移信号,用小波滤波器去除高频干扰信号,并将这两部分所得到的心电噪声分量作为自适应滤波器的参考输入信号,利用自适应滤波器调整对含噪ECG信号进行滤波处理。最后,经实验验证了本文算法的有效性。     

Digital fractional order operators for R-wave detection in electrocardiogram signal

In this study, we present an effective R-wave detection method in the QRS complex of the electrocardiogram (ECG) based on digital differentiation and integration of fractional order. The detection algorithm is performed in two steps. The pre-processing step is based on a fractional order digital band-pass filter whose fractional order is obtained by maximising the signal to noise ratio of the ECG signal, followed by a five points differentiator of fractional order 1.5 then the squaring transformation and the smoothing are used to generate peaks corresponding to the ECG parts with high slopes. The detection step is a new and simple strategy which is also based on fractional order operators for the localisation of the R waves. The MIT/BIH arrhythmia database is used to test the effectiveness of the proposed method. The algorithm has provided very good performance and has achieved about 99.86% of the detection rate for the standard database. The results obtained are presented, discussed and compared to the most recent and efficient R-wave detection algorithms.     

An adaptive Kalman filter for ECG signal enhancement

The ongoing trend of ECG monitoring techniques to become more ambulatory and less obtrusive generally comes at the expense of decreased signal quality. To enhance this quality, consecutive ECG complexes can be averaged triggered on the heartbeat, exploiting the quasi-periodicity of the ECG. However, this averaging constitutes a tradeoff between improvement of the SNR and loss of clinically relevant physiological signal dynamics. Using a bayesian framework, in this paper, a sequential averaging filter is developed that, in essence, adaptively varies the number of complexes included in the averaging based on the characteristics of the ECG signal. The filter has the form of an adaptive Kalman filter. The adaptive estimation of the process and measurement noise covariances is performed by maximizing the bayesian evidence function of the sequential ECG estimation and by exploiting the spatial correlation between several simultaneously recorded ECG signals, respectively. The noise covariance estimates thus obtained render the filter capable of ascribing more weight to newly arriving data when these data contain morphological variability, and of reducing this weight in cases of no morphological variability. The filter is evaluated by applying it to a variety of ECG signals. To gauge the relevance of the adaptive noise-covariance estimation, the performance of the filter is compared to that of a Kalman filter with fixed, (a posteriori) optimized noise covariance. This comparison demonstrates that, without using a priori knowledge on signal characteristics, the filter with adaptive noise estimation performs similar to the filter with optimized fixed noise covariance, favoring the adaptive filter in cases where no a priori information is available or where signal characteristics are expected to fluctuate.     

基于形态滤波的心电信号基线矫正算法

基线矫正是心电(ECG)信号预处理中的一个重要步骤.本文提出了一个基于形态滤波的ECG信号基线矫正算法.首先,对原始输入ECG信号进行基于相同结构元素的形态开闭-闭开滤波,抑制其中的QRS波群;然后,采用两个不同宽度的结构元素,对去除QRS波群后的ECG信号进行广义形态开-闭滤波,分离出基线漂移信号;最后,用原始ECG信号减去估计出的基漂信号,得到经过基线矫正的ECG信号.仿真实验与实际应用结果表明,本文方法不仅可以有效去除ECG信号中的基漂干扰,而且较好地保持了ECG信号的原有特征形态,处理效果明显优于以往算法.     

A comparison of the noise sensitivity of nine QRS detectionalgorithms

The noise sensitivities for nine different QRS detection algorithms were measured for a normal, single-channel lead II, synthesized ECG corrupted with five different types of synthesized noise. The noise types were electromyographic interference, 60 Hz powerline interference, baseline drift due to respiration, abrupt baseline shift, and a composite noise constructed from all of the other noise types. The percentage of QRS complexes detected, the number of false positives, and the detection delay were measured. None of the algorithms were able to detect all QRS complexes without any false positives for all of the noise types at the highest noise level. Algorithms based on amplitude and slope had the highest performance for EMG-corrupted ECG. An algorithm using a digital filter had the best performance for the composite noise corrupted data.     

A higher-order statistics-based adaptive algorithm for lineenhancement

A novel higher order statistics (HOS) based adaptive filtering algorithm for line enhancement is suggested. The enhancement process is achieved by filtering the noisy signal through an adaptive FIR filter. The steady state of the impulse response of this filter is proportional to a selected one-dimensional (1-D) slice of the fourth-order mixed cumulant of the input signal. It is shown that this slice is comprised of noiseless sinusoids if the input signal is comprised of sinusoids embedded in Gaussian noise. Therefore, the algorithm is considered to be a suitable one in processing sinusoids embedded in highly colored Gaussian noise. Simulation results verify the performance of the proposed algorithm     

Denoising and R-Peak Detection of Electrocardiogram Signal Based on EMD and Improved Approximate Envelope

The electrocardiogram (ECG ) signal is prone to various high and low frequency noises, including baseline wandering and power-line interference, which become the source of errors in QRS and in other extracted features. This paper presents a new ECG signal-processing approach based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and an improved approximate envelope method. To reduce the number of the initial intrinsic mode functions (IMFs), a Butterworth lowpass filter is used to eliminate high frequency noises before the EMD. To correct baseline wandering and to eliminate low frequency noises, the two last-order IMFs are abandoned. An improved approximate envelope is proposed and applied after the Hilbert transform to enhance the energy of QRS complexes and to suppress unwanted P/T waves and noises. Then, an algorithm based on the slope threshold is used for R-peak detection. The proposed denoising and R-peak detection algorithm are validated using the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database. The simulation results show that the proposed method can effectively eliminate the Gaussian noise, baseline wander, and power-line interference added to the ECG signal. The method can also function reliably even under poor signal quality and with long P and T peaks. The QRS detector has an average sensitivity of Se=99.94 % and a positive predictivity of +P=99.87 % over the first lead of the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database.     

Non-Coherent Pulse Detection with a Large Predetection Bandwidth

For a non-coherent detection circuit with a broad-band pre-detection filter and narrow-band post-detection-filter, equations are obtained for the probability of detection of a pulsed sinusoidal signal embedded in white noise. The equations can be used to calculate the detection probability directly from envelope form, noise power at the input of the circuit and the impulse response of the postdetection filter. The application of the equations is illustrated with reference to a sliding correlator acquisition circuit for PN-code generators.     

Estimation of QRS complex power spectra for design of a QRS filter

We present power spectral analysis of ECG waveforms as well as isolated QRS complexes and episodes of noise and artifact. The power spectral analysis shows that the QRS complex could be separated from other interfering signals. A bandpass filter that maximizes the signal (QRS complex)-to-noise (T-waves, 60 Hz, EMG, etc.) ratio would be of use in many ECG monitoring instruments. We calculate the coherence function and, from that, the signal-to-noise ratio. Upon carrying out this analysis on experimentaly obtained ECG data, we observe that a bandpass filter with a center frequency of 17 Hz and a Q of 5 yields the best signal-to-noise ratio.     

一种新的自适应语音增强系统

针对自适应噪声对消(ANC)语音增强系统的性能高度依赖于参考信号的质量，任何原始语音信号泄漏到参考信号中，都会导致原始语音信号失真和噪声抵消性能恶化这一问题，本文提出一种对泄漏不敏感的附加随机噪声(ARN)自适应噪声对消语音增强系统。它通过在参考信号中加入一个低功率的宽带随机训练信号，然后用该训练信号作参考信号对噪声传输函数(NTF)进行自适应建模，并在使用自适应预测滤波器(APF)消除NTF自适应建模的语音信号干扰的同时，用补偿滤波器(CPF)来修正由APF引起的参考信号失真。计算机仿真表明，这种ARNANC语音增强系统在泄漏情况下能将原始语音信号从带噪语音信号中有效分离出来。     

Quantitative Investigation of QRS Detection Rules Using the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database

We have investigated the quantitative effects of a number of common elements of QRS detection rules using the MIT/BIH arrhythmia database. A previously developed linear and nonlinear filtering scheme was used to provide input to the QRS detector decision section. We used the filtering to preprocess the database. This yielded a set of event vectors produced from QRS complexes and noise. After this preprocessing, we tested different decision rules on the event vectors. This step was carried out at processing speeds up to 100 times faster than real time. The role of the decision rule section is to discriminate the QRS events from the noise events. We started by optimizing a simple decision rule. Then we developed a progressively more complex decision process for QRS detection by adding new detection rules. We implemented and tested a final real-time QRS detection algorithm, using the optimized decision rule process. The resulting QRS detection algorithm has a sensitivity of 99.69 percent and positive predictivity of 99.77 percent when evaluated with the MIT/BIH arrhythmia database.     

A real-time microprocessor QRS detector system with a 1-ms timingaccuracy for the measurement of ambulatory HRV

The design, test methods, and results of an ambulatory QRS detector are presented. The device is intended for the accurate measurement of heart rate variability (HRV) and reliable QRS detection in both ambulatory and clinical use. The aim of the design work was to achieve high QRS detection performance in terms of timing accuracy and reliability, without compromising the size and power consumption of the device. The complete monitor system consists of a host computer and the detector unit. The detector device is constructed of a commonly available digital signal processing (DSP) microprocessor and other components. The QRS detection algorithm uses optimized prefiltering in conjunction with a matched filter and dual edge threshold detection. The purpose of the prefiltering is to attenuate various noise components in order to achieve improved detection reliability. The matched filter further improves signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and symmetries the QRS complex for the threshold detection, which is essential in order to achieve the desired performance. The decision for detection is made in real-time and no search-back method is employed. The host computer is used to configure the detector unit, which includes the setting of the matched filter impulse response, and in the retrieval and postprocessing of the measurement results. The QRS detection timing accuracy and detection reliability of the detector system was tested with an artificially generated electrocardiogram (EGG) signal corrupted with various noise types and a timing standard deviation of less than 1 ms was achieved with most noise types and levels similar to those encountered in real measurements. A QRS detection error rate (ER) of 0.1 and 2.2% was achieved with records 103 and 105 from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database, respectively     

基于小波和扩展卡尔曼的心电检测

文中将小波变换和扩展卡尔曼滤波器相结合,利用小波变换多尺度多分辨的特点,将心电信号进行分解。然后对心电信号在各尺度上进行扩展卡尔曼滤波。最后在扩展卡尔曼滤波的输出结果上进行QRS波形检测。文中方法经MIT-BIH心电数据库检验,QRS波Se（探测灵敏度）在99.40%以上,同时,QRS＋P（正探测率）在99.39%以上,提高了心电信号检测的正确率。     

Atrial activity enhancement by Wiener filtering using an artificial neural network

This paper describes a novel technique for the cancellation of the ventricular activity for applications such as P-wave or atrial fibrillation detection. The procedure was thoroughly tested and compared with a previously published method, using quantitative measures of performance. The novel approach estimates, by means of a dynamic time delay neural network (TDNN), a time-varying, nonlinear transfer function between two ECG leads. Best results were obtained using an Elman TDNN with nine input samples and 20 neurons, employing a sigmoidal tangencial activation in the hidden layer and one linear neuron in the output stage. The method does not require a previous stage of QRS detection. The technique was quantitatively evaluated using the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database and compared with an adaptive cancellation scheme proposed in the literature. Results show the advantages of the proposed approach, and its robustness during noisy episodes and QRS morphology variations.