Linear phase properties of the singular spectrum analysis components for the estimations of the RR intervals of electrocardiograms

Abstract

Denoising is the first step in both the QRS complex detection and the beat classification. However, infinite impulse response filters usually exhibit nonlinear phase responses. As a result, the group delays of the output signals based on the infinite impulse response filtering are different at different time instants. This causes the inaccuracies of the estimations of the RR intervals of the electrocardiograms. In this paper, the denoising is performed based on the singular spectrum analysis approach. The linear phase properties of the singular spectrum analysis components are investigated. Finally, the RR intervals of the denoised electrocardiograms are estimated and those obtained based on the infinite impulse response filtering approach are compared. The computer numerical simulation results show that the estimation performance based on the singular spectrum analysis approach outperforms that based on the infinite impulse response filtering approach.