ECG ACQUISITION

AND FILTERATION
Sunil Kumar (12104008)
PEC University of Technology, India

Oct 16, 2015

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Electrocardiography
Electrocardiography (ECG) is the acquisition of electrical activity of
the heart captured over time by an external electrode attached to
the skin.
Each of the cell membranes that form the outer covering of the
heart cell have an associated charge which is depolarized during
every heart beat.
These appear as tiny electrical signals on the skin which can be
detected and amplified by the ECG.

Each living cell acts as a small battery that depolarizes and

repolarizes when there is a disturbance.
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ECG Basics
The term lead in context to an ECG refers to the voltage
difference between two of the electrodes, and it is this
difference which is recorded by the equipment.
For example Lead_I is the voltage between the left arm
and right arm electrodes. Lead_I and Lead_II are referred to
as Limb leads.
V1-V6 are referred to as chest leads. The ECG tracing V1 is
the difference between the voltage at Vc1(the voltage at the
electrode on the chest) and the average of Lead_I, Lead_II,
and Lead_III.
A standard 12-Lead ECG system consists of eight actual
values and four derived values.

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Superposition of all the action potentials produces the

ECG signal
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Table 1gives a snapshot of various lead voltages, actual

and derived.
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TYPES OF ARTIFACT IN ECG SIGNAL

It becomes difficult for the specialist to diagnose the diseases if the
artifacts are present in the ECG signal
Major sources of noise are
1. Power line interference
2. Muscle contractions
3. Electrode contact noise
4. Motion Artifacts
5. Baseline wandering
6. Noise generated by electronic devices used in signal processing
circuits
7. Electrical interference external to the subject and recording system
8. High-frequency noises in the ECG
9. Breath, lung, or bowel sounds contaminating the heart sounds
(PCG).

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Electrical Signals
The primary electrical components captured are the
myocardium, muscle, skin-electrode interface, and external
interference.

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Common Frequencies Of The Important

Components On The ECG
Heart rate: 0.67 5 Hz (i.e. 40 300 bpm)
P-wave: 0.67 5 Hz
QRS: 10 50 Hz
T-wave: 1 7 Hz
High frequency potentials: 100-500 Hz

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Common Frequencies Of The Artifact And Noise On The ECG:

Muscle: 5 50 Hz
Respiratory: 0.12 0.5 Hz (e.g. 8 30 bpm)
External electrical: 50 or 60 Hz (A/C mains or
line frequency)
Other electrical: typically >10 Hz (muscle
stimulators, strong magnetic fields, pacemakers
with impedance monitoring)

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Circuit Design
An ECGs job is to amplify the small signal
measured from the heart as well as to filter
outside and internal noise.

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Amplifier
1. ECG signals vary from the microvolt to the
millivolt range.
2. The signals measured need to be amplified in
order to be better interpreted
3. Due to the small size of the signal, the gain
should be large.
4. Typically a gain of over 1000 is implemented in
biopotential amplifier circuits.
5. The amplifiers should have a high common
mode rejection ratio to eliminate large offset
signals.

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Amplifier
Thus combinations of differential amplifiers are used to
construct what is called an instrumentation amplifier.

Basic Instrumentation Amplifier

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Amplifier
The first stage is the input stage of the amplifier followed by
the gain stage.

Input and gain stages of instrumentation

amplifier
The input stage ideally supplies no common mode gain thus
eliminating common mode noise.
The gain stage has low impedance and supplies a differential
gain.
The amplifier amplifies only the differential component with a
gain and provides a high common mode rejection ratio.
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Filtering
ECGs are subject to many different kinds of noise internally and
externally.

ECG artifacts

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Filteration Using Analog Devices

Used to modulate 60 Hz noise from power lines based on what
resistor, capacitor, and inductor values are chosen.

Second order band stop filter

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Right Leg Drive

To reduce interference from the amplifier.
The right leg drive inverts and amplifies the average common mode
signal back into the patients right leg.
This action cancels 60 Hz noise from AC power and creates a cleaner
ECG output signal.

Right leg drive connection

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ECG Circuit

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Filtering on an ECG is done four fold: high-pass, low-pass,

notch, and common mode filtering.
High-pass filtersremove low frequency signals (i.e. only
higher frequencies may pass).
Low-pass filtersremove high frequency signals.
The high-pass and low-pass filters together are known as
abandpass filter, literally allowing only a certain
frequency band to pass through.
Thenotch filteris used to eliminate the line frequency
and is usually printed on the ECG (e.g. ~60 Hz).
Common mode rejectionis often done via right-leg drive,
where an inverse signal of the three limb electrodes are
sent back through the right leg electrode.

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Signal Processing Basics

A frequency of 1 Hz means a signal repeats itself
every one second.
Our hearts produce electrical activity recorded by
electrodes as asignal.
The sinoatrial node fires at roughly 50 to 90
beats per minute, and we will say60 beats per
minuteis the happy median.
This means the heart has a fundamental
frequency of1 Hzat this heart rate. Therefore,
all of the ECG components (P, QRS, and T) will
occur at or above this frequency.
ECG signal repeats itself, each time the heart
cycles through systole and diastole.
We can break it down into individual waves
orharmonics. This process of breaking down a
signal into a series ofsine wavesis known
asFourier Analysis.

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Each of the harmonics (sine waves) have a

certainamplitude,frequency, andphase.

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What Electrical Signals Are Recorded By The ECG?

The recording is made through electrodes on the skin, which capture
more than just the electrical activity of the heart.
The primary electrical components captured are the myocardium,
muscle, skin-electrode interface, and external interference

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 The skin-electrode interface requires special note,

as it is the largest source of interference,
producing a DC component of 200-300 mV.
Compare this to the electrical activity of your
heart, which is in the range of 0.1 to 2 mV! The
interference seen from this component is
magnified by motion, either patient movement, or
respiratory variation.

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FILTERING TECHNIQUES FOR ECG SIGNAL PROCESSING

The ECG signal is very sensitive in nature
The signal voltage level is as low as 0.5 to 5mV and is
susceptible to artifacts that are
larger than it.
The frequency components of a human's ECG signal fall into
the range of 0.05 to 100Hz
filtering remains an important issue

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Filtering on an ECG is done four fold: high-pass, lowpass, notch, and common mode filtering.

High-pass filtersremove low frequency signals (i.e.

only higher frequencies may pass).
Low-pass filterson the ECG are used to remove high
frequency
The high-pass and low-pass filters together are known
as abandpass filter, literally allowing only a certain
frequency band to pass through.
Thenotch filteris used to eliminate the line
frequency and is usually printed on the ECG (e.g. ~60
Hz).
Common mode rejectionis often done via right-leg
drive, where an inverse signal of the three limb
electrodes are sent back through the right leg
electrode.

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High-pass filters

High-pass filtersremove low frequency

signals (i.e. only higher frequencies may
pass).
High-pass filtersremove low-frequency
components such as motion artifact,
respiratory variation, and baseline wander.
Unlike low-pass filters, analog high-pass
filters do not attenuate much of the signal.
However, analoghigh-pass filters suffer
from phase shiftaffecting the first 5 to 10
harmonics of the signal. This means that a
0.5 Hz high pass filter, which is a lower
frequency than the myocardium produces,
still can affect frequencies up to 5 Hz!

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Low-pass filters

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Low-pass filterson the ECG are used to

remove high frequency muscle artifact and
external interference.
They typically attenuate only the amplitude
of higher frequency ECG components.
Analog low-pass filtering has a noticeable
affect on the QRS complex and J-waves but
do not alter repolarization signals.

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Removal Of Common Mode Noise

Interference usually manifests as common mode noise
across both terminals of the differential amplifier. This
noise can be removed by the following methods:
Isolate the front-end ground electronics from the digital
system as much as possible.
Use instrumentation amplifiers with very high common
mode rejection ratios on the order of 100dB
Drive the patient body with an inverted common mode
signal. The right leg of the patient is driven with a signal
which is the inverted average of Lead_I, Lead_II, and
Lead_III.
Shield the device using metallic shields to prevent high
frequency RF from being coupled into the system.
Use shielded cables to acquire the ECG which are driven
with a common voltage to reduce noise from being
coupled.
Apart from the above methods, a number of software
algorithms are present for the removal of noise after the
signal has been acquired. Sunil (PEC)
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Baseline Wandering
The main source of baseline wandering is
respiration.
Baseline wander (BW) that may be due to
respiration or the motion of the patients or the
instruments
The baseline wander (BW) mainly caused by
respiration
It is having the frequency range between 0.15 to
3Hz.
Used the wavelet transform to eliminate the
Baseline wandering
Baseline wander is a low-frequency component
present in the ECG system. This is due to offset
voltages in the electrodes, respiration, and body
movement.
The offset also limits the maximum value of gain
which can be obtained from the instrumentation

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Removal Of Baseline Wander

This noise can be removed by:
Implementing a high-pass filter using hardware.
The cut-off frequency should be such that the ECG is undistorted
while the baseline wander must be removed.
A typical value of the cut-off frequency is 0.05Hz.
Since this cut-off frequency is very low, this method requires
bulky capacitors . In this method, two stages of gain are
implemented since the offset can saturate at the output of the
instrumentation amplifier.
The two-stage filter also makes the system more complex.
This system requires a low resolution ADC, typically 8 to 16 bits
of resolution.

Figure shows the signal chain flow for implementing the

high pass filter in hardware.

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Power Line Interference

Due to improper grounding of ECG equipment and

interference from near by equipment.
It is removed by using notch filter.
Major source of such noise is electrical activity of the
muscles
Fig; the noise present due to power line interface
(50HZ)
The suppression of Baseline Wander and Power
Interference can be done using digital IIR filter
(Infinite Impulse Response)

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Removal of power-line noise

The amplitude of power-line noise is very
large and generally gets coupled into the
system, despite care to prevent commonmode noise in the digital domain. Power-line
noise is removed by implementing a notch
filter at 50/60Hz in the digital domain.

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Firmware-based noise correction

Many software algorithms are available which help in filtering of
ECG after digitization.
These algorithms are often used in high-end equipment and are
usually proprietary to the manufacturer.
The microcontroller needs to have sufficient capacity to
implement these complex algorithms.
The transfer function of the filter can be implemented in the
digital domain.
Care has to be taken in choosing the order of the filter. It should
be high enough to enable a steep roll-off, but not so high as to
prevent the effect of ringing.
Used a flexible digital-filter block, the microcontroller can
implement the desired frequency response needed for ECG
system.
High-speed analog multiplexers allow the acquisition of various
channel data, and a high input impedance instrumentation
amplifier should be used external to the microcontroller to
amplify the signal.
The availability of a high resolution ADC on the order of 20 bits

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 ECG signal is measured on static condition since the appearance

of heartbeats varies considerably, but also movements,
respiration and modifications in the electrical activity of the body.
Electrical and mechanical noise components are added to signal
and it made difficult to extract key features.
In general, measured ECG signal data contains muscle artifact
noise, baseline wander noise, electrode moving artifact noise,
and 60Hz power line noise.
The power line noise can be easily removed by notch filter since
its frequency centered on 60Hz.
Wavelet interpolation filter (WIF) is effective to remove muscle
noise.
For baseline wander noise removal, finite impulse response (FIR)
filter and infinite impulse response (IIR) filter, and adaptable filter
are widely used.

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Band pass filter[Himanshu, S. et al (2010)]

Designed amplifier using
instrumentation amplifier
AD620 (Analog Devices)
Used band pass filter with
cutoff frequency 0.5Hz-150
TheHz
data sampled at a rate of 1 KHz.
After acquiring the signal it is
processed by Butterworth (IIR) 3rd
order digital filter
The first digital filter is band stop filter between 49.5 to 51.4Hz
to eliminate power line interference.
Butterworth filter having various orders, the lowest order being
the best in time domain, and higher order being better in
frequency domain

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adaptive noise filtering [Padma T. et al (2009)]

For removal of 50 Hz that is the power line interference
because, the ECG signal also contains 50 Hz signal and
if normal band reject filter is used, then the 50 Hz
signal which is very important in the ECG signal will be
lost.
Therefore by opting adaptive noise filtering, the power
line frequency can be eliminated at the same time
retaining the 50 Hz signal in the original waveform

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Fig, adaptable noise reduction algorithm

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 The active high-pass filter removes the baseline

fluctuations.
For removing wide band noises, undecimated wavelet
transform (UWT) is applied, which has a better balance
between smoothness and accuracy than the discrete
wavelet transforms (DWT).
It is difficult to deal with electrical interference since it
cant be filtered without compromising the ECG complex
because of its similarity to the ECG signal frequency, so
it is best to monitor away from other equipment,
ensuring cable and lead wires do not cross the power
cables of other equipment or vent tubing.

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To reduce muscle tremor and patient movement,

attempt to warm a shivering patient or make them
more comfortable in a reclined position, if possible,
rather than adjust a filter setting and then continually
check lead wire-to-electrode connection and electrodeto-patients skin adhesion to ensure ECG quality and
prevent false alarms.

When it comes to ECG quality, the electrode type,

electrode application, and skin preparation are factors
that play an important role in sending a good ECG
signal to the monitor for analysis.

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Summary
Technological advances in communication and
low power circuit design have enabled the
development of better, safer ECG devices with a
capacity to incorporate the latest diagnostic
features.
But the issue of the sensitivity of ECG signal
getting distorted by even a small noise makes the
study of ECG filtering along with the various types
of filters very significant .
Hence the acquisition and analysis of ECG signal
still
remain
a
challenging
task,
despite
technological advances.
But further study and research should continue to
develop cost effective and flexible methods of
ECG filtering with improved performance of
various filters applied Sunil
to ECG
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References

Himanshu S., Kumar, J. S. J. Ashok, V., Juliet, A. V. (2010):

Advanced ECG Signal Processing using Virtual Instrument,
International J. of Recent Trends in Engineering and
Technology, Vol. 3, No. 2.
Advances in Neural Networks - ISNN 2006: Pt. III: Third
International
ECE 445 Biopotential amplifiers prepared by Professor
Andrew Mason INA333 data sheet.
http://www.ems12lead.com/2014/03/10/understandingecg-filtering/
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1278571

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