A Survey on ECG Signal Feature Extraction and Analysis Techniques

Abstract: Electrocardiogram (ECG), a non-stationary signal, is extensively used to measure the rate and regularity of heartbeats. Comparison of overall ECG waveform pattern and shape enables doctors to diagnose possible diseases. Currently there is computer based analysis which employs certain signal processing to diagnose a patient based on ECG recording. Noise severely limits the utility of the recorded ECG and thus needs to be removed for better clinical evaluation. ECG feature extraction is also required because it plays a significant role in diagnosing most of the cardiac diseases. One cardiac cycle in an ECG signal consists of the P-QRS-T waves. The feature extraction scheme determines the amplitudes and intervals in the ECG signal or any other features of it for subsequent analysis. Recently, numerous research and techniques have been developed for analyzing the ECG signal. This proposed paper discusses various techniques and transformations proposed earlier in literature for feature extraction and analysis of ECG signals and makes comparison among them.

Keywords: ECG, processing, feature extraction, ECG signal analysis.