Respiration effect on single and multi lead ECG delineation strategies

The main purpose of this work is to study the influence of the mechanical effect of the respiration over T wave end delineation. The performance of automatic delineation systems based in Wavelet Transform (WT) was compared, considering single lead (SL), post processing selection rules (SLR) and multi lead (ML) approaches. The T wave locations obtained over real and simulated ECG signals were analyzed together with the respective respiratory signal (ECG-derived or simulated). The linear relation between the variations on obtained marks and the mechanical effect of the respiration was measured using spectral coherence. With respect to the ML strategy we also explored the evolution of the vectorcardiographic spatial loop using the direction of maximum projection of the WT in the region close to the T wave end (T(e)). The relation between this direction and the respiration is also explored. The marks obtained from the SLR and ML delineation strategies show advantage over the SL strategy based marks. The coherence around the respiratory frequency between the respiratory signal and the error in T end marks was found to be higher using SLR (a minimum of 0.92) than using ML (a maximum of 0.80). According to obtained results, the multi lead delineation presents a lower sensibility to the mechanical effect of the respiration for the T wave end delineation, particularly the obtained with ML.