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Automatic Detection of the R Peaks in Single-Lead ECG Signal

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Abstract

The accurate delineation of R peaks in an ElectroCardioGram (ECG) is required for analysis and diagnosis of various cardiac abnormalities. Detection of the R peak is a challenging task due to the presence of various artifacts and varying morphology of the ECG signal in inter- and intrasubject. In this paper, an effective and novel algorithm for the accurate detection of R peaks in the single-lead ECG signal is proposed. The QRS complex is enhanced by removing P, T waves and other artifacts using combination of wavelet transform, derivatives and Hilbert transform. The enhanced QRS complex is detected by adaptive thresholding. This method is robust against inter- and intrasubject variations of the ECG signal morphology and also provides high degree of accuracy for very noisy signals. The algorithm is tested on all the signals of MIT-BIH arrhythmia Database, QT database and noise stress database taken from physionet.org (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Biomedical Engineering Center, Cambridge, MA, 1992. www.physionet.org/physiobank/databse/html/mitdbdir/mitdbdir.htm). The performance of the algorithm is confirmed by sensitivity of 99.9%, positive predictivity of 99.9% and detection accuracy of 99.8% for R peaks detection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The NorthCap University, Gurgaon, India

    Pooja Sabherwal & Latika Singh

  2. CARE, IIT Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Monika Agrawal

Authors
  1. Pooja Sabherwal
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  2. Monika Agrawal
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  3. Latika Singh
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Correspondence to Pooja Sabherwal.

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Sabherwal, P., Agrawal, M. & Singh, L. Automatic Detection of the R Peaks in Single-Lead ECG Signal. Circuits Syst Signal Process 36, 4637–4652 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-017-0537-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-017-0537-2

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