Power Line Interference Removal from ECG Signal Using Different IIR Filters

Abstract

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is widely and primarily used for diagnosis purpose of various cardiac diseases by the physicians. An ECG records the electrical impulses generated by the myocardium and describes the condition of the heart. A good quality ECG signal is always desirable for accurate diagnosis of a life-threatening patient. However, in real circumstances, these signals are corrupted by prominent noises, artifacts and interference like power line interference (PLI), electrode movement noise, white noise, muscle artifacts, etc., and these must be removed before diagnosis. From the above mentioned artifacts PLI is conspicuously prominent. Different IIR (Butterworth, Notch, and Chebyshev) filters are designed to remove PLI from ECG signal. Through the consecutive employment of these filters, ECG signal will become free from artifacts in a remarkable amount. After exploring the simulation results of both the output waveforms and the values of SNR, it is notified that the Notch filter is the best suited for the removal of PLI. In this paper, a comparative approach is presented for removing PLI from ECG signal using various digital filters.