Time-frequency plane Wiener filtering of the high-resolution ECG: background and time-frequency representations

This paper introduces the concept of a posteriori Wiener filtering (APWF), performed in the time-frequency plane. The objective is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the ensemble-averaged high-resolution electrocardiogram (HRECG). APWF was developed to address the problem of a limited ensemble size for estimating ensemble-averaged evoked potentials. For the HRECG, we identify the major challenge as adapting the time-frequency structure of the filter to that of low-level cardiac signals. Technical limitations and the characteristics of HRECG signals make time-frequency analysis of the ensemble average problematic. Normal and abnormal signal components are difficult to distinguish due to low time-frequency energy concentration and limited spectrotemporal resolution. However, considering the entire ensemble of repetitive ECG records, signal and noise components are separable in the time-frequency plane. This forms the basis of the new time-frequency plane Wiener (TFPW) filter, applicable to any ensemble averaging problem involving repetitive deterministic signals mixed with uncorrelated noise.