Power-line interference cancellation in ECG signals

The efficiency of notchfilters and a subtraction procedure for power-line interference cancellation in electrocardiogram (ECG) signals is assessed. In contrast with the subtraction procedure, widely used digital notch filters unacceptably affect QRS complexes. The procedure eliminates interferences of variable amplitude and frequency. The frequency modulations are overcome by adaptive synchronized sampling. Initially, this is accomplished by current hardware power-line frequency measurement. Because this approach is impossible in battery-supplied and some computer-aidd devices, a software measurement of the power-line interference period is developed.