Adaptive motion artifact reduction based on empirical wavelet transform and wavelet thresholding for the non-contact ECG monitoring systems

Abstract

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are crucial for determining the health status of the human heart. A clean ECG signal is critical in analysis and diagnosis of heart diseases. However, ECG signals are often contaminated by motion artifact noise in the non-contact ECG monitoring systems. In this paper, an ECG motion artifact removal approach based on empirical wavelet transform (EWT) and wavelet thresholding (WT) is proposed. This method consists of five steps, namely, spectrum preprocessing, spectrum segmentation, EWT decomposition, wavelet threshold denoising, and EWT reconstruction. The proposed approach was used to process real ECG signals collected by the non-contact ECG monitoring equipment. The results of quantitative study and analysis indicate that this approach produces a better performance in terms of restorage of QRS complexes of the original ECG with reduced distortion, retaining useful information in ECG signals, and improvement of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) value of the signal. The output results of the practical ECG signal test show that motion artifact in the real recorded ECG is effectively filtered out. The proposed method is feasible for reducing motion artifacts from ECG signals, whether from simulation ECG signals or practical non-contact ECG monitoring systems.