An Improved Peak Quantification Algorithm for Automatic Heart Rate Measurements

This paper proposes a new method improving the peak quantification algorithm (PQA) introduced by Navakatikyan, et al. In measuring a human heart rate (HR). Experiments reveal that although the PQA can accurately measure the heart rates based on electrocardiogram (ECG) waveforms, this algorithm is too complex and uses too much memory, resulting in substantial reduction in accuracy when applied such algorithm to an embedded system. The proposed improved-peak quantification algorithm (improved-PQA) can rapidly analyze the heartbeat waveforms and still accurately measure the heart rates even when it is adopted in an embedded system with a lower computational power and speed