Power Line Interference removal from ECG signal using SSRLS algorithm

An electrocardiogram (ECG) signal may be affected by different types of disturbances/noises e.g. Power Line Interference (PLI), baseline wander, motion artifacts etc. Removing such disturbing signals from an ECG signal is the key to its accurate analysis leading to diagnosis of potential disease(s). In this paper, we present State Space Recursive Least Squares (SSRLS) filter based method for removal of 50Hz PLI noise from an ECG signal. The results are encouraging when compared with notch filter of varying attenuation levels. Under varying PLI noise levels, the SSRLS filter is seen to show superior performance as compared to notch filter. This work is part of National Information & Communication Technologies Research and Development (ICT R&D) fund project done in collaboration with National Institute of Heart Diseases (NIHD), Pakistan.