ECG signal denoising using discrete wavelet transform: A comparative analysis of threshold values and functions

Abstract

The electrocardiogram signal (ECG) is a bio-signal used to determine cardiac health. However, different types of noise that commonly accompany these signals can hide valuable information for diagnosing disorders. The paper presents an experimental study to remove the noise in ECG signals using the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) theory and a set of thresholds filters for efficient noise filtering. For the assessment process, we used ECG records from MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database (MITDB) and standardized noise signals (muscle activity and electrode-skin contact) database from the Noise Stress Test database. In addition to the ECG signals a white Gaussian noise present in electrical type signals was added. Furthermore, as a first step we considered baseline wander and power line interference reduction. The metrics used are the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), the Percent Root mean square Difference (PRD), and the Euclidian L2 Norm standard (L2N). Results reveal that there is not a single combination of filtering thresholds (function and value) to minimize all types of noise and interference present in ECG signals. Reason why an ECG denoising algorithm is proposed which allows choosing the appropriate combination (function-value) threshold, where the SNR values were the maximum and the error values were the minimum.