On-line cancelling technique of ECG interference in the diaphragmatic electromyographic signals

Describes an innovative ECG masking-filtering method (MFM) for rapid removal of ECG interference in diaphragmatic electromyographic (EMGdi) signals. The key feature of this approach is using a widened Hanning window for masking out the ECG complexes. The performance of the proposed technique is studied using computer simulations. To evaluate our method, we present a quantitative analysis of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the relative errors of the following spectral features: mean frequency, median frequency and high-to-low (H/L) ratio after cancellation. The usefulness of these parameters is shown for monitoring human diaphragm fatigue.