New aspects to event-synchronous cancellation of ECG interference: an application of the method in diaphragmatic EMG signals

An "event-synchronous interference canceller" (ESC) for cancellation of electrocardiographic (ECG) interference in diaphragmatic electromyographic (EMGdi) signals is addressed in this paper, ESC pursues the concept of the "event synchronous adaptive interference canceller" (ESAIC), which was proposed in P. Strobach et al., ibid., vol. 41, p. 343-50 (1994) as a specific application of the well known "adaptive noise canceller" (ANC) paradigm, but ESC uses a simple adaptive gain control (AGC) instead of the complex adaptive filter of the ANC. The proposed ESC method is evaluated using both computer simulations and real EMGdi data, and its efficiency in interference cancellation is compared to that of ESAIC. Of particular interest is the result that the ESC can replace the ESAIC providing better performance as well as a considerable reduction of computational costs.