A time delay estimation technique for overlapping signals in electrocardiograms

This paper presents a new technique for the estimation of the PR intervals from the electrocardiograms (ECG) taking into account the influence of the T wave overlapping the P wave during high heart rate. The decreasing part of the T wave is modelled by a piecewise linear function, in a maximum likelihood approach. This leads to improve the estimation of the PR intervals in exercise and recovery. Experimental results show that this new method gives more accurate estimation of the PR intervals both in synthetic data and in real data. Also, we show that measurements of PR and RR intervals permit us to classify athletes in function of their training degree.