Effect of high-pass filtering on ECG signal on the analysis of patients prone to atrial fibrillation

Ann Ist Super Sanita. 2009;45(4):427-31. doi: 10.1590/s0021-25712009000400012.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of filtering techniques on the time-domain analysis of the ECG. Multi-lead ECG recordings obtained from chronic atrial fibrillation (AF) patients after successful external cardioversion have been acquired. Several high-pass filtering techniques and three cut-off frequency values were used: Bessel and Butterworth four-pole and two-pole bidirectional and unidirectional filters, at 0.01, 0.05 and 0.5 Hz low cut-off frequency. As a reference, a beat-by-beat linear piecewise interpolation was used to remove baseline wander, on each P-wave. Results show that ECG filtering affects the estimation of P-wave duration in a manner that depends upon the type of filter used: particularly, the bidirectional filters caused negligible variation of P-wave duration, while unidirectional ones provoked an increase higher than 8%.

MeSH terms

  • Atrial Fibrillation / diagnosis*
  • Data Interpretation, Statistical
  • Electrocardiography / instrumentation
  • Electrocardiography / statistics & numerical data*
  • Electrodes
  • Exercise Test
  • Heart / physiopathology
  • Humans