Accession Number:

ADA556231

Title:

A Robust Method to Estimate Instantaneous Heart Rate from Noisy Electrocardiogram Waveforms

Descriptive Note:

Journal article

Corporate Author:

ARMY MEDICAL RESEARCH AND MATERIEL COMMAND FORT DETRICK MD

Personal Author(s):

• Gribok, Andrei V.
• Chen, Xiaoxiao
• Reifman, Jaques

Report Date:

2011-02-01

Pagination or Media Count:

13.0

Abstract:

We propose a new algorithm for real-time estimation of instantaneous heart rate HR from noise-laden electrocardiogram ECG waveforms typical of unstructured ambulatory field environments. The estimation of HR from ECG waveforms is an indirect measurement problem that requires differencing, which invariably amplifies high-frequency noise. We circumvented noise amplification by considering the estimation of HR as the solution of a weighted regularized least squares problem, which, in addition directly provided analytically based confidence intervals CIs for the estimated HRs. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, we applied it to simulated data and to noise-laden ECG records that were collected during helicopter transport of trauma-injured patients to a trauma center. We compared the proposed algorithm with HR estimates produced by a widely used vital-sign travel monitor and a standard HR estimation technique, followed by postprocessing with Kalman filtering or spline smoothing. The simulation results indicated that our algorithm consistently produced more accurate HR estimates, with estimation errors as much as 67 smaller than those attained by the postprocessing methods, while the results with the field collected data showed that the proposed algorithm produced much smoother and reliable HR estimates than those obtained by the vital-sign monitor. Moreover, the obtained CIs reflected the amount of noise in the ECG recording and could be used to statistically quantify uncertainties in the HR estimates. We conclude that the proposed method is robust to different types of noise and is particularly suitable for use in ambulatory environments where data quality is notoriously poor.

Descriptors:

• *ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHY
• AIR TRANSPORTATION
• ALGORITHMS
• AMPLIFICATION
• CONFIDENCE LIMITS
• DATA MANAGEMENT
• ESTIMATES
• HEART RATE
• HELICOPTERS
• HIGH FREQUENCY
• KALMAN FILTERING
• LEAST SQUARES METHOD
• MEASUREMENT
• METHODOLOGY
• NOISE
• PATIENTS
• RECORDING SYSTEMS
• REFLECTION
• SPLINES
• TRAUMA
• WAVEFORMS
• WEIGHTING FUNCTIONS

Subject Categories:

• Medicine and Medical Research

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE