Detection and Processing of the R Peak

Abstract: Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a commonly recorded bio-signal that captures the electrical activity of the heart. Identifying various features and traits could help us detect the normal and pathological physiology of the heart, thus providing valuable information about the activity of the human heart which is a very important step in ECG signal analysis. Computer processing of ECG has evolved as an emerging tool in medical diagnosis for effective treatments. The work proposed in this paper deals with the detection of the R peak and its feature evaluation and reviews and summarizes the various techniques used by researchers in order to detect the same. ECG signals in this work are collected from several places and it has been implemented using MATLAB routine consisting of four different databases formats. The processing of the data was done on the Lead-II ECG signals.

Keywords: Electrocardiogram (ECG), R Peak, Lead-II Configuration, Pan Tompkins Algorithm, Matlab