Classification of right bundle branch block and left bundle branch block cardiac arrhythmias based on ECG analysis

Abstract

Heart is a vital organ of the human body which plays an important role in the circulation of the blood throughout the body and also serves as the power source of the electrical impulses that generate the rhythmicity of the heart, thus resulting in the successful circulation of the blood. Now, any disturbance in the proper functioning of the heart results in some type of diseases termed as cardiovascular diseases or arrhythmias. These diseases can be diagnosed and consequently treated. The diagnosis is done by an efficient technique known as electrocardiogram (ECG). This paper focuses on the area of biomedical signal analysis, where a method for detection of two types of cardiac arrhythmias, namely right bundle branch block (RBBB) and left bundle branch block (LBBB), is discussed. The signal processing and analysis have been carried out on the data collected from MITBIH (Berbari in Principles of Electrocardiography, pp 2–11, 2000, [1]) database. Implementation is done on the MATLAB platform. Signal analysis is done through a number of steps like preprocessing, feature extraction, and classification, and the results are generated in the form of waveforms, thus classifying the cardiac arrhythmias RBBB and LBBB.