Three methods for determining respiratory waves from ECG (Part I)

In the diagnosis of many disease entities directly or indirectly related to disorders of respiratory parameters and heart disease, an important support would be to estimate the temporal changes in these parameters (most often respiratory wave (RW) and respiratory rate (RR)) on the basis the results of measurements of other physiological parameters of the patient. Such a possibility exists during ECG examination. The paper presents three methods for estimating RWand RR using ECG signal processing. The three procedures developed are shown: using Savitzky–Golay filtering (S-G), the ECG-Derived Respiration method (EDR) and the Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Analysis method (RSA). It must be clearly stated that the proposed methods are not designed to fully diagnose the patient’s respiratory function, but they can be applied to detect some conditions that are difficult to diagnose when performing an ECG, such as sleep-disordered breathing. The obtained results of the analysis were compared with those obtained from a dedicated measurement system developed by the authors. The second part of the paper will show the results of preliminary clinical verification of the developed analysis methods, taking into account the physiological parameters of the patient.