ECG delineation

This document describes how to perform automatic delineation or wave segmentation on ECG signals.

Description

Automatic wave segmentation or delineation is exclusively performed by wavedet algorithm.

Input Arguments

The properties that this task uses are the following:

progress_handle — Used to track the progress within your function. [] (default)

progress_handle, is a handle to a progress_bar object, that can be used to track the progress within your function.

tmp_path — The path to store temporary data. tempdir() (default)

Full path to a directory with write privileges.

delineators — The ECG delineation algorithms to use 'all-delineators' (default)

This property controls which algorithms are used. A cell string or char with any of the following names

only_ECG_leads — Process only ECG signals true (default)

Boolean value. Find out which signals are ECG based on their ECG_header.desc description.

wavedet_config — A structure for configuring wavedet algorithm. [] (default)

Undocumented yet, use it only if you know what you are doing.

payload — An arbitrary format variable. [] (default)

This variable can be useful for passing data to your own delineation function (described below) or to provide visually audited QRS detections to the delineation algorithm.

Adding a custom delineation algorithm

Adding your own delineator to the kit is very simple. Ensure that your function implements this interface:

function [positions_single_lead, position_multilead] =

            your_ECG_delineation( ECG_matrix, ECG_header, progress_handle, payload_in)

where the arguments are:

ECG_matrix, is a matrix size [ECG_header.nsamp ECG_header.nsig]

ECG_header, is a struct with info about the ECG signal, such as:

  • freq, is the sampling frequency of ECG_matrix signal.
  • desc, description strings about each of the leads/signals.
  • nsamp is the number of samples of ECG_matrix.
  • nsig is the amount of leads or signals of ECG_matrix.
  • gain is a vector of [nsig × 1] with the gain of each lead ( ADCsamples / μV ).
  • adczero is a vector of [nsig × 1] with the offset of each lead in ADC samples.

and others described in the Physionet header.

progress_handle, is a handle to a progress_bar object, that can be used to track the progress within your function.

payload_in, is a user variable, of arbitrary format, allowed to be sent to your function. It is sent via the payload property of this class, for example:

% One variable
this_ECG_wrapper.ECGtaskHandle.payload = your_variable;

% Several variables with a cell container
this_ECG_wrapper.ECGtaskHandle.payload = {your_var1 your_var2};

% Or the result of a previous task, in this case QRS manual correction (if available)
% or the automatic detection if not.
cached_filenames = this_ECG_wrapper.GetCahchedFileName({'QRS_corrector' 'QRS_detection'});
this_ECG_wrapper.ECGtaskHandle.payload = load(cached_filenames);

and the output of your function must be:

positions_single_lead, is an structure array of ECG_header.nsig elements with at least the following wave fiducial points as fields:

  • 'Pon' P wave onset
  • 'P' P wave peak
  • 'Poff' P wave offset
  • 'QRSon' QRS complex onset
  • 'qrs' QRS fiducial point, obtained from QRS detection.
  • 'Q' Q wave peak
  • 'R' R wave peak
  • 'S' S wave peak
  • 'QRSoff' QRS complex offset
  • 'Ton' T wave onset
  • 'T' T wave peak
  • 'Toff' T wave offset

position_multilead, is a single structure with at least the wave fiducial points described above. This delineation is commonly calculated from the single lead delineations, in order to obtain a unique wave fiducial point per heartbeat.

Examples

Create the ECGtask_ECG_delineation object.

% with the task name
    ECG_w.ECGtaskHandle = 'ECG_delineation';
% or create an specific handle to have more control
    ECGt = ECGtask_ECG_delineation();

and then you are ready to set the algorithms to use. In the following example you have several possible set-ups.

% select an specific algorithm. Default: Run all detectors
        ECGt.delineators = 'wavedet'; % Wavedet algorithm based on
        % "your_delineator_func_name" can be your own delineator.
                    ECGt.delineators = 'user:your_delineator_func_name';
        ECGt.delineators = {'wavedet' 'user:your_delineator_func_name'};

Finally set the task to the wrapper object, and execute the task.

ECG_w.ECGtaskHandle= ECGt; % set the ECG task
ECG_w.Run();

You can check the result of this task, with either the delineator corrector or the visualization functions.

Also check this example for further information.

Results format

The result file will have a struct variable with the name of the algorithm (only wavedet at the time of writing this). Inside this, it will contain one delineation struct per ECG lead in the ECG_header.desc field, plus another called multilead which is a delineation accounting with the information present in all leads.

More About

This publication describes the wavedet algorithm.