Detection of QRS complexes in ECG signals based on Empirical Mode Decomposition

Arrhythmia is one kind of diseases that gives rise to the death and possibly forms the immedicable danger. The most common cardiac arrhythmia is the ventricular premature beat. The main purpose of this study is to develop an efficient arrhythmia detection algorithm based on Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). This algorithm requires the following stages: band-pass Butterworth filters, Empirical Mode Decomposition, sum the first three Intrinsic Functions Mode (IMFs), and take its absolute value, retain the amplitudes, find the position of the maximum. The excellent performance of the algorithm is confirmed by a sensitivity of 99.82 % (204 false negatives) and a positive predictivity of 99.89% (114 false positives) against the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database