ECG denoising and fiducial point extraction using an extended Kalman filtering framework with linear and nonlinear phase observations

In this paper we propose an efficient method for denoising and extracting fiducial point (FP) of ECG signals. The method is based on a nonlinear dynamic model which uses Gaussian functions to model ECG waveforms. For estimating the model parameters, we use an extended Kalman filter (EKF). In this framework called EKF25, all the parameters of Gaussian functions as well as the ECG waveforms (P-wave, QRS complex and T-wave) in the ECG dynamical model, are considered as state variables. In this paper, the dynamic time warping method is used to estimate the nonlinear ECG phase observation. We compare this new approach with linear phase observation models. Using linear and nonlinear EKF25 for ECG denoising and nonlinear EKF25 for fiducial point extraction and ECG interval analysis are the main contributions of this paper. Performance comparison with other EKF-based techniques shows that the proposed method results in higher output SNR with an average SNR improvement of 12 dB for an input SNR of -8 dB. To evaluate the FP extraction performance, we compare the proposed method with a method based on partially collapsed Gibbs sampler and an established EKF-based method. The mean absolute error and the root mean square error of all FPs, across all databases are 14 ms and 22 ms, respectively, for our proposed method, with an advantage when using a nonlinear phase observation. These errors are significantly smaller than errors obtained with other methods. For ECG interval analysis, with an absolute mean error and a root mean square error of about 22 ms and 29 ms, the proposed method achieves better accuracy and smaller variability with respect to other methods.