Baseline drift correction and heart rate estimation using Histogram technique

Abstract

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the measurement of the electrical activity of the heart over a period of time. The different abnormalities of the heart can be found by analysing ECG. But many disturbances are present in the ECG. One such artifact is baseline drift. Here, in this paper Histogram technique is applied to correct baseline drift. Histogram, which gives the distribution of data based on its frequency of appearance is used to correct the baseline for various samples acquired from PTB diagnostic ECG database. The logic is applied by keeping in mind that the iso-electric or baseline is that portion of the ECG which shows the absence of electrical activity of the heart. Moreover after correction of the ECG baseline drift, the RR interval and heart rate is estimated. Further using the RR interval along the different statistical features like mean, median, mode, histogram the regularly irregular characteristics of the ECG is estimated and verified by manual observing. The heart rate estimated using our algorithm was found to be 99.65 % accurate.