Complementary Bandwidth Extension Method Using Analog Forward and Digital Inverse Filters and Its Application to Noncontact ECG Measurement

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel method for extending bandwidth of ECG measuring device without deteriorating the baseline tolerance for body motion. The proposed method is realized by synthesizing a two-stage analog forward filter with two different corner frequencies and a digital inverse filter having a corner frequency identical with the higher one of the analog filter. We applied the method to bed-type capacitive ECG sensor which can detect electrocardiographic potential non-intrusively and indirectly. The results demonstrated that the proposed method could precisely recover low-frequency components like T-wave. Furthermore, we confirmed that QTc (corrected QT interval) could be estimated from the recovered wave and that the QTc correlated 0.81 on the average with that obtained from Lead II ECG for seven subjects. These results indicate that the proposed method is useful to screening of long QT syndrome by combining the method with the bed-type capacitive ECG sensor.