Robust QRS complex detection in noisy electrocardiogram based on underdamped periodic stochastic resonance

Robust QRS detection is crucial for accurate diagnosis and monitoring of cardiovascular diseases. During the detection process, various types of noise and artifacts in the electrocardiogram (ECG) can degrade the accuracy of algorithm. Previous QRS detectors have employed various filtering methods to minimize the negative impact of noise. However, their performance still significantly deteriorates in large-noise environments. To further enhance the robustness of QRS detectors on noisy electrocardiograms (ECGs), we proposed a QRS detection algorithm based on an underdamped. This method utilizes the period nonlinearity-induced stochastic resonance to enhance QRS complexes while suppressing noise and non-QRS components in the ECG. In contrast to neural network-based algorithms, our proposed algorithm does not rely on large datasets or prior knowledge. Through testing on three widely used ECG datasets, we demonstrated that the proposed algorithm achieves state-of-the-art detection performance. Furthermore, compared to traditional stochastic resonance-based method, our algorithm has increased noise robustness by 25% to 100% across various real-world environments. This enables the proposed method to maintain its optimal performance within a certain range even in the presence of additional injected noise, thus providing an excellent approach for robust QRS detection in noisy ECGs.