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Electrocardiogram Derived Respiratory Rate from QRS Slopes and R-Wave Angle

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Abstract

A method for estimating respiratory rate from electrocardiogram (ECG) signals is presented. It is based on QRS slopes and R-wave angle, which reflect respiration-induced beat morphology variations. The 12 standard leads, 3 leads from vectorcardiogram (VCG), and 2 additional non-standard leads derived from VCG loops were analyzed. The following series were studied as ECG derived respiration (EDR) signals: slope between the peak of Q and R waves, slope between the peak of R and S waves, and the R-wave angle. Information from several EDR signals was combined in order to increase the robustness of estimation. Evaluation is performed over two databases containing ECG and respiratory signals simultaneously recorded during two clinical tests with different characteristics: tilt test, representing abrupt cardiovascular changes, and stress test representing a highly non-stationary and noisy environment. A combination of QRS slopes and R-wave angle series derived from VCG leads obtained a respiratory rate estimation relative error of 0.50 ± 4.11% (measuring 99.84% of the time) for tilt test and 0.52 ± 8.99% (measuring 96.09% of the time) for stress test. These results outperform those obtained by other reported methods, both in tilt and stress testing.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dr. A. Mincholé, Dr. L. Sörnmo, Dr. G. Blain and Dr. S. Bermon for providing the authors with datasets. This work is supported by Universidad de Zaragoza under fellowship PIFUZ-2011-TEC-A-003, by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), FEDER; under projects TEC2010-21703-C03-02, TEC2010-19410, TEC2013-42140-R, TIN2013-41998-R and FIS-PI12/00514, by CIBER de Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina through Instituto de Salud Carlos III, and by Grupo Consolidado BSICoS from DGA (Aragón) and European Social Fund (EU). Esther Pueyo acknowledges the financial support of Ramón y Cajal program from MINECO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. BSICoS group, Aragón Institute of Engineering Research (I3A), IIS Aragón, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Jesús Lázaro, Alejandro Alcaine, Eduardo Gil, Pablo Laguna, Esther Pueyo & Raquel Bailón

  2. Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina (CIBER-BBN), Madrid, Spain

    Jesús Lázaro, Alejandro Alcaine, Daniel Romero, Eduardo Gil, Pablo Laguna, Esther Pueyo & Raquel Bailón

  3. Laboratoire Traitement du Signal et de l’Image, Université de Rennes I, Rennes, France

    Daniel Romero

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  1. Jesús Lázaro
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Correspondence to Jesús Lázaro.

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Associate Editor Anastasios G. Bezerianos oversaw the review of this article.

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Lázaro, J., Alcaine, A., Romero, D. et al. Electrocardiogram Derived Respiratory Rate from QRS Slopes and R-Wave Angle. Ann Biomed Eng 42, 2072–2083 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-014-1073-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-014-1073-x

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