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Time-varying digital filtering of ECG baseline wander

  • Computing and Data Processing
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Abstract

Time-varying filtering techniques are applied to the problem of baseline correction by letting the cut-off frequency of a linear filter be controlled by the low-frequency properties of the ECG signal. The time-varying filter is implemented as a bank of linear low-pass filters, in which each filter has a slightly differing cut-off frequency. Sampling rate decimation and interpolation are employed because the design of a filter for baseline reduction can be treated as a narrowband filtering problem. All filters have a linear phase response to reduce, for example, ST-segment distortion. The performance of the technique presented is studied on ECG signals with different types of simulated baseline wander. The results are compared with the performance of time-invariant linear filtering and cubic spline interpolation. The results show that an improvement in performance can be achieved when using time-varying filtering, especially at low heart rates or during episodes with excessive baseline wander.

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Sörnmo, L. Time-varying digital filtering of ECG baseline wander. Med. Biol. Eng. Comput. 31, 503–508 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02441986

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02441986

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