Electrocardiogram Removal to Establish a Motion Artifact Database

Bioelectric signal sensors are susceptible to various contaminants, including motion artifact. Signal quality analysis helps avoid misinterpretations, including misdiagnoses, that can arise from signal contaminants. To further the research in the signal quality analysis and cleaning domain, large amounts of contaminated data are required for training, testing, and validation of signal quality analysis systems. Motion artifact is a common contaminant. Currently, databases of motion artifact are limited, resulting in the repeated use of the same signals. A database of motion artifact is established by developing a system for the removal of electrocardiograms (ECG) in ambulatory recordings. The Long Term AF Database, which contains 84 ECG recordings, each approximately 24 hours in length, was used to create the motion artifact database. The system for the removal of ECG was validated using artificially contaminated ECG signals, a combination of clean ECG signals with added simulated motion artifact signals.