Determination of Heart Rate from ECG Signal- A Simplified Approach

Electrocardiography is a non-invasive technique of registration of the electrical activity of the heart and is widely used as a diagnostic tool by the physicians. ECG signal yields information about the conditions of the heart. Among many morphological markers of the ECG, the QRS complex and the R-peaks are the most significant ones---with the contribution of the R-peak to RR interval being a driving factor. The number of R-peaks in a specified interval leads to the determination of the heart rate in beats per minute. This calls for an efficient R-peak detection algorithm. The authors have suggested here a straight-forward algorithm, the efficacy of which has been improved by enhancing the quality of the ECG signal by EMD method. The performance has been compared with Pan-Tompkins algorithm---a benchmark method and also against the original values obtained from MIT/BIH database.