Muscle noise cancellation in four-lead ECG system for ubiquitous healthcare

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is one of the most frequently used vital sign in ubiquitous healthcare. In many applications, the standard 12-lead ECG is desirable for monitoring both arrhythmia and acute coronary syndrome. Wei et al [1, 2] has developed a method for deriving standard 12-lead ECG from four-lead ECG so that the 12-lead ECG can be monitored in a ubiquitous environment. However, in multi-lead ECG recording, the noise due to body movement is the main problem (even for a 4-lead ECG system). In this paper, we introduce an implementation that applies a low distortion filter method originally aimed at a 12-lead ECG system to a four 4-lead ECG system. The algorithm is improved for 4-lead ECG application, and validation is performed with both simulated and clinical ECG signals. The results show that the effect of the filter method for a 4-lead ECG system is as good as for a 12-lead ECG system so as to be feasible to ubiquitous healthcare applications.