The stationary wavelet transform as an efficient reductor of powerline interference for atrial bipolar electrograms in cardiac electrophysiology

Objective : The most relevant source of signal contamination in the cardiac electrophysiology (EP) laboratory is the ubiquitous powerline interference (PLI). To reduce this perturbation, algorithms including common fixed-bandwidth and adaptive-notch filters have been proposed. Although such methods have proven to add artificial fractionation to intra-atrial electrograms (EGMs), they are still frequently used. However, such morphological alteration can conceal the accurate interpretation of EGMs, specially to evaluate the mechanisms supporting atrial fibrillation (AF), which is the most common cardiac arrhythmia. Given the clinical relevance of AF, a novel algorithm aimed at reducing PLI on highly contaminated bipolar EGMs and, simultaneously, preserving their morphology is proposed. Approach : The method is based on the wavelet shrinkage and has been validated through customized indices on a set of synthesized EGMs to accurately quantify the achieved level of PLI re...
Source: Physiological Measurement - Category: Physiology Authors: Source Type: research