SpringerLink
Log in

Extraction of ECG Characteristics Using Source Separation Techniques: Exploiting Statistical Independence and Beyond

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Advanced Biosignal Processing

Abstract

The extraction of signals of interest from electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings corrupted by noise and artifacts accepts a blind source separation (BSS) model. The BSS approach aims to estimate a set of underlying source signals of physiological activity from the sole observation of unknown mixtures of the sources. The statistical independence between the source signals is a physiologically plausible assumption that can be exploited to achieve the separation. The mathematical foundat ions, advantages and limitations of the most common BSS techniques based on source independence, namely, principal component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA), are summarized. More recent techniques taking advantage of prior knowledge about the signal of interest or the mixing structure are also briefly surveyed. The performance of some of these methods is illustrated on real ECG data. Although our focus is on fetal ECG extraction from maternal skin potential recordings and atrial activity extraction in surface ECG recordings of atrial fibrillation, the BSS methodology can readily be extended to a variety of problems in biomedical signal processing and other domains.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
EUR 32.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (Canada)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free ship** worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    See also [23] for an earlier reference in French.

  2. 2.

    http://www.i3s.unice.fr/~zarzoso/robustica.html

References

  1. Adib A, Moreau E, Aboutajdine, D (2004) Source separation contrasts using a reference signal. IEEE Signal Processing Letters 11(3):312–315

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Al-Zaben A, Al-Smadi A (2006) Extraction of foetal ECG by combination of singular value decomposition and neuro-fuzzy inference system. Physics in Medicine and Biology 51(1):137–143

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Barros AK, Vigário R, Jousmäki V et al. (2000) Extraction of event-related signals from multichannel bioelectrical measurements. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 47(5):583–588

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bell AJ, Sejnowski TJ (1995) An information-maximization approach to blind separation and blind deconvolution. Neural Computation 7(6):1129–1159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Belouchrani A, Abed-Meraim K, Cardoso JF et al. (1997) A blind source separation technique using second-order statistics. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 45(2):434–444

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Bingham E, Hyvärinen A (2000) A fast fixed-point algorithm for independent component analysis of complex valued signals. International Journal of Neural Systems 10(1):1–8

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bollmann A, Lombardi F (2006) Electrocardiology of AF. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine 25(6):15–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Bollmann A, Kanuru NK, McTeague KK et al. (1998) Frequency analysis of human AF using the surface electrocardiogram and its response to Ibutilide. American Journal of Cardiology 81(12):1439–1445

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bonizzi P, Meste O, Zarzoso V (2007) Atrio-ventricular junctionbehaviour during AF. In: Proc. 34th IEEE Annual Conference on Computers in Cardiology, Durham, North Carolina, USA, 561–564

    Google Scholar 

  10. Bonizzi P, Phlypo R, Zarzoso V et al. (2008a) The exploitation of spatial topographies for atrial signal extraction in AF ECGs. In: Proc. EMBC-2008, 30thAnnual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vancouver, Canada, 1867–1870

    Google Scholar 

  11. Bonizzi P, Phlypo R, Zarzoso V et al. (2008b) Atrial signal extraction in AF ECGs exploiting spatial constraints. In: Proc. EUSIPCO-2008, 16th European Signal Processing Conference, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Google Scholar 

  12. Callaerts D, De Moor B, Vandewalle J et al. (1990) Comparison of SVD methods to extract the foetal electrocardiogram from cutaneous electrode signals. Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing 28:217–224

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Cardoso JF (1994) On the performance of orthogonal source separation algorithms. In: Proc. EUSIPCO-94, VII European Signal Processing Conference, Edinburgh, UK, 776–779

    Google Scholar 

  14. Cardoso JF (1997) Infomax and maximum likelihood in blind source separation. IEEE Signal Processing Letters 4(4):112–114

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Cardoso JF (1998) Blind signal separation: statistical principles. Proceedings of the IEEE 86(10):2009–2025

    Google Scholar 

  16. Cardoso JF (1999) Higher-order contrasts for independent component analysis. Neural Computation 11:157–192

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Cardoso JF, Souloumiac A (1993) Blind beamforming for non-Gaussian signals. IEE Proceedings-F 140(6):362–370

    Google Scholar 

  18. Castells F, Igual J, Rieta JJ et al. (2003) AF analysis based on ICA including statistical and temporal source information. In: Proc. ICASSP-2003, 28th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing. Volume V., Hong Kong, China, 93–96

    Google Scholar 

  19. Castells F, Mora C, Rieta JJ et al. (2005a) Estimation of atrial fibrillatory wave from single-lead AF electrocardiograms using principal component analysis concepts. Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing 43(5):557–560

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Castells F, Rieta JJ, Millet et al. (2005b) Spatiotemporal blind source separation approach to AA estimation in atrial tachyarrhythmias. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 52(2):258–267

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Castells F, Igual J, Millet JJ et al. (2005c) AA extraction from AF episodes based on maximum likelihood source separation. Signal Processing 85(3):523–535

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Castells F, Laguna P, Sörnmo L et al. (2007) Principal component analysis in ECG signal processing. EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, 21 pages

    Google Scholar 

  23. Comon P (1990) Analyse en composantes indpendantes et identification aveugle. Traitement du signal (Numéro spécial non linéaire et non gaussien) 7(3):435–450

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  24. Comon P (1994) Independent component analysis, a new concept? Signal Processing (Special Issue on Higher-Order Statistics) 36(3):287–314

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  25. Comon P (2002) Independent component analysis, contrasts, and convolutive mixtures. In: Proc. 2nd IMA Intl. Conference on Mathematics in Communications, Lancaster, UK, 10–17

    Google Scholar 

  26. Comon P (2004) Contrasts, independent component analysis, and blind deconvolution. International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing (Special Issue on Blind Signal Separation) 18(3):225–243

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  27. De Lathauwer L, Callaerts D, De Moor B et al. (1995) Fetal electrocardiogram extraction by source subspace separation. In: Proc. IEEE/ATHOS Signal Processing Conference on Higher-Order Statistics, Girona, Spain, 134–138

    Google Scholar 

  28. De Lathauwer L, De Moor B, Vandewalle J (2000) Fetal electrocardiogram extraction by blind source subspace separation. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (Special Topic Section on Advances in Statistical Signal Processing for Biomedicine) 47(5):567–572

    Google Scholar 

  29. Delfosse N, Loubaton P (1995) Adaptive blind separation of independent sources: a deflation approach. Signal Processing 45(1):59–83

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Donoho D (1980) On minimum entropy deconvolution. In: Proc. 2nd Applied Time Series Analysis Symposium, Tulsa, OK, USA, 565–608

    Google Scholar 

  31. Golub GH, Van Loan CF (1996) Matrix Computations. 3rd edn. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, USA (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Hérault J, Jutten C, Ans B (1985) Détection de grandeurs primitives dans un message composite par une architecture neuromimétique en apprentissage non supervisé. In: Actes 10ème Colloque GRETSI, Nice, France, 1017–1022

    Google Scholar 

  33. Hesse CW, James CJ (2005) The FastICA algorithm with spatial constraints. IEEE Signal Processing Letters 12(11):792–795

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Hesse CW, James CJ (2006) On semi-blind source separation using spatial constraints with applications in EEG analysis. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 53(12): 2525–2534

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Holm M, Pehrson S, Ingemansson M et al. (1998) Noninvasive assessment of the atrial cycle length during AF in man: introducing, validating and illustrating a new ECG method. Cardiovascular Research 38(1):69–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Hyvärinen A (1999) Fast and robust fixed-point algorithms for independent component analysis. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 10(3):626–634

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Hyvärinen A, Oja E (1997) A fast fixed-point algorithm for independent component analysis. Neural Computation 9(7):1483–1492

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Hyvärinen A, Karhunen J, Oja E (2001) Independent Component Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  39. James CJ, Gibson OJ (2003) Temporally constrained ICA: an application to artifact rejection in electromagnetic brain signal analysis. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 50(9):1108–1116

    Google Scholar 

  40. Kanjilal P, Palit S, Saha G (1997) Fetal ECG extraction from single-channel maternal ECG using singular value decomposition. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 44(1):51–59

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Li X, Zhang X (2007) Sequential blind extraction adopting second-order statistics. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 14(1):58–61

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Lu W, Rajapakse JC (2005) Approach and applications of constrained ICA. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 16(1):203–212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Lu W, Rajapakse JC (2006) ICA with reference. Neurocomputing 69:2244–2257

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Netabayashi T, Kimura Y, Chida S et al. (2008) Robustness of the blind source separation with reference against uncertainties of the reference signals. In: Proc. EMBC-2008, 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 1875–1878

    Google Scholar 

  45. Peters M, Crowe J, Piéri, JF et al. (2001) Monitoring the fetal heart non-invasively: a review of methods. Journal of Perinatal Medicine 29(5):408–416

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Phlypo R, D’Asseler Y, Lemahieu I et al. (2007a) Extraction of the AA from the ECG based on independent component analysis with prior knowledge of the source kurtosis signs. In: Proc. EMBC-2007, 29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Lyon, France, 6499–6502

    Google Scholar 

  47. Phlypo R, Zarzoso V, Comon P et al. (2007b) Extraction of AA from the ECG by spectrally constrained kurtosis sign based ICA. In: Proc. ICA-2007, 7th International Conference on Independent Component Analysis and Signal Separation, London, UK, 641–648

    Google Scholar 

  48. Phlypo R, Zarzoso V, Lemahieu I (2008a) Exploiting independence measures in dual spaces with application to atrial f-wave extraction in the ECG. In: Proc. MEDSIP-2008, 4th International Conference on Advances in Medical, Signal and Information Processing, Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy

    Google Scholar 

  49. Phlypo R, Zarzoso V, Comon P et al. (2008b): Cumulant matching for independent source extraction. In: Proc. EMBC-2008, 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 3340–3343

    Google Scholar 

  50. Phlypo R, Zarzoso V, Lemahieu I (2008c) Eigenvector analysis for separation of a spectrally concentrated source from a mixture. In: Proc. EMBC-2008, 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 1863–1866

    Google Scholar 

  51. Rieta JJ, Zarzoso V, Millet-Roig, J et al. (2000) AA extraction based on blind source separation as an alternative to QRST cancellation for AF analysis. In: Proc. Computers in Cardiology. Vol. 27, Boston, MA, USA, 69–72

    Google Scholar 

  52. Rieta JJ, Castells F, Sánchez C et al. (2004) AA extraction for AF analysis using blind source separation. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 51(7):1176–1186

    Article  Google Scholar 

  53. Ristaniemi T, Joutsensalo J (2002) Advanced ICA-based receivers for block fading DS-CDMA channels. Signal Processing 82(3):417–431

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  54. Rosenbaum DS, Cohen, RJ (1990) Frequency based measures of AF in man. In: Proc. 12th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society

    Google Scholar 

  55. Sameni R, Jutten C, Shamsollahi MB (2008) Multichannel electrocardiogram decomposition using periodic component analysis. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, in press

    Google Scholar 

  56. Sánchez C, Millet J, aRieta JJ (2001) Packet wavelet decomposition: an approach for AA extraction. In: Computers in Cardiology. Volume 29, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 33–36

    Google Scholar 

  57. Sato M, Kimura Y, Chida S et al. (2007) A novel extraction method of fetal electrocadiogram from the composite abdominal signal. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 54(1):49–58

    Article  Google Scholar 

  58. Saul LK, Allen JB (2000) Periodic component analysis: an eigenvalue method for representing periodic structure in speech. In: Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 13, Denver, CO, USA, 807–813

    Google Scholar 

  59. Schmidt RO (1986) Multiple emitter location and signal parameter estimation. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation AP-34(3):276–280

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Shalvi O, Weinstein E (1990) New criteria for blind deconvolution of nonminimum phase systems (channels). IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 36(2):312–321

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  61. Slocum J, Byrom E, McCarthy L et al. (1985) Computer detection of atrioventricular dissociation from surface electrocardiogram during wide QRS complex tachycardia. Circulation 72:1028–1036

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Stridh M, Sörnmo L (2001) Spatiotemporal QRST cancellation techniques for analysis of AF. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 48(1):105–111

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Tichavský P, Koldovský Z, Oja E (2006) Performance analysis of the FastICA algorithm and Cramér-Rao bounds for linear independent component analysis. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 54(4):1189–1203

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Tong L, Liu R, Soon VC et al. (1991) Indeterminacy and identifiability of blind identification. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems 38(5):499–509

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  65. Tugnait JK (1997) Identification and deconvolution of multichannel non-Gaussian processes using higher order statistics and inverse filter criteria. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 45:658–672

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Vanderschoot J, Callaerts D, Sansen W et al. (1987) Two methods for optimal MECG elimination and FECG detection from skin electrode signals. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering BME-34(3):233–243

    Article  Google Scholar 

  67. Vásquez C, Hernández A, Mora F et al. (2001) AA enhancement by Wiener filtering using an artificial neural network. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 48(8):940–944

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Widrow B, Glover JR, McCool JM et al. (1975) Adaptive noise cancelling: principles and applications. Proceedings of the IEEE 63(12):1692–1716

    Google Scholar 

  69. Zarzoso V (2008) On an extended SOBI algorithm for bind source extraction. IEE Electronics Letters, to be submitted

    Google Scholar 

  70. Zarzoso V, Comon P (2007) Comparative speed analysis of FastICA. In: Proc. ICA-2007, 7th International Conference on Independent Component Analysis and Signal Separation, London, UK, 293–300

    Google Scholar 

  71. Zarzoso V, Comon P (2008a) Robust independent component analysis for blind source separation and extraction with application in electrocardiography. In: Proc. EMBC-2008, 30th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 3344–3347

    Google Scholar 

  72. Zarzoso V, Comon P (2008b) Independent component analysis based on optimal step-size iterative search. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, to be submitted

    Google Scholar 

  73. Zarzoso V, Nandi AK (1999) Blind separation of independent sources for virtually any source probability density function. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 47(9):2419–2432

    Article  Google Scholar 

  74. Zarzoso V, Nandi AK (2001) Noninvasive fetal electrocardiogram extraction: blind separation versus adaptive noise cancellation. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering 48(1):12–18

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. Zarzoso V, Nandi AK, Bacharakis E (1997) Maternal and foetal ECG separation using blind source separation methods. IMA Journal of Mathematics Applied in Medicine & Biology 14(3):207–225

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  76. Zarzoso V, Nandi AK, Herrmann F et al. (2001) Combined estimation scheme for blind source separation with arbitrary source PDFs. Electronics Letters 37(2):132–133

    Article  Google Scholar 

  77. Zarzoso V, Comon P, Kallel M (2006a) How fast is FastICA? In: Proc. EUSIPCO-2006, XIV European Signal Processing Conference, Florence, Italy

    Google Scholar 

  78. Zarzoso V, Murillo-Fuentes JJ, Boloix-Tortosa R et al. (2006b) Optimal pairwise fourth-order independent component analysis. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing 54(8):3049–3063

    Article  Google Scholar 

  79. Zarzoso V, Phlypo R, Comon P (2008a) A contrast for independent component analysis with priors on the source kurtosis signs. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, in press

    Google Scholar 

  80. Zarzoso V, Phlypo R, Meste O et al. (2008b) Signal extraction in multisensor biomedical recordings. In Verdonck, P., ed.: Advances in Biomedical Engineering. Volume 1. Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in press

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire d’Informatique, Signaux et Systèmes de Sophia Antipolis, Université de Nice – Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, Les Algorithmes – Euclide-B, 2000 route des Lucioles, BP 121, 06903 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France

    Vicente Zarzoso

Authors
  1. Vicente Zarzoso
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vicente Zarzoso .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Labo. Images, Signaux et, Systèmes Intelligents (LISSI) EA 3956, Université Paris 12, av. du Général de Gaille 61, Créteil, 94010, France

    Amine Naït-Ali

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Zarzoso, V. (2009). Extraction of ECG Characteristics Using Source Separation Techniques: Exploiting Statistical Independence and Beyond. In: Naït-Ali, A. (eds) Advanced Biosignal Processing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89506-0_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89506-0_2

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-89505-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-89506-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation