CPR artifact removal in ventricular fibrillation ECG signals using Gabor multipliers.
OBJECTIVE
We present an algorithm for discarding cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) components from ventricular fibrillation ECG (VF ECG) signals and establish a method for comparing CPR attenuation on a common dataset. Removing motion artifacts in ECG allows for uninterrupted rhythm analysis and reduces "hands-off" time during resuscitation.


RESULTS
The current approach assumes a multichannel setting where the information of the corrupted ECG is combined with an additional pressure signal in order to estimate the motion artifacts. The underlying algorithm relies on a localized time-frequency transformation, the Gabor transform, that reveals the perturbation components, which, in turn, can be attenuated. The performance of the method is evaluated on a small set of test signals in the form of error analysis and compared to two well-established CPR removal algorithms that use an adaptive filtering system and a state-space model, respectively.


CONCLUSIONS
We primarily point out the potential of the algorithm for successful artifact removal; however, on account of the limited set of human VF and animal asystole CPR signals, we refrain from a statistical analysis of the efficiency of CPR attenuation. The results encourage further investigations in both the theoretical and the clinical setup.
Werther
Tobias
T
Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna, A-1090 Vienna, Austria. tobias.werther@univie.ac.at
Klotz
Andreas
A
Kracher
Günther
G
Baubin
Michael
M
Feichtinger
Hans G
HG
Gilly
Hermann
H
Amann
Anton
A