Heartbeat detection from the upper arm using an SWT-based zero-phase filter bank incorporated with a voting Scheme

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Signal Processing
• Cardiology

Background:

• Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are crucial for detecting cardiac abnormalities.
• Accurate heartbeat detection is essential for ECG signal analysis and diagnosis.
• Conventional Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT) for heartbeat detection suffers from signal phase shift issues.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the phase shift limitation of SWT in ECG analysis.
• To develop a novel, accurate heartbeat detection method for ECG signals.
• To evaluate the performance of the proposed method using upper arm ECG data.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a zero-phase filter bank integrated with SWT.
• Incorporation of a voting scheme to enhance detection accuracy.
• Validation of the method using ECG signals recorded from the upper arm.

Main Results:

• The proposed SWT-based zero-phase filter bank method demonstrated superior performance in heartbeat detection.
• The new method achieved more accurate localization of heartbeats compared to conventional SWT.
• High sensitivity (SE) of 0.98±0.04 and positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.95±0.09 were obtained within 50 ms of actual heartbeats.

Conclusions:

• The developed method effectively overcomes the phase shift issue associated with SWT.
• The proposed technique offers improved accuracy and localization for heartbeat detection.
• This method holds potential for implementation in wearable devices for remote cardiac monitoring from unconventional sites like the upper arm.