Removing movement artifacts from equine ECG recordings acquired with textile electrodes.

This research article outlines a new system and algorithm designed to reduce movement artifacts in horse ECG recordings. These artifacts often appear when the horse is moving freely and can interfere with accurate results.

Overview of the Research

• This paper reports on the research conducted to create and test a system aimed at detecting and reducing movement artifacts. These artifacts are disturbances or distortions that can interfere with electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings acquired from horses that are free to move around.
• The artifacts are typically generated by the physical movement of the horse.
• It’s difficult to remove these artifacts subsequently, as they can overlap with the signals the researchers are interested in—the electrical activity of the horse’s heart.

New System and its Components

• The authors of the study have developed a new system that can continuously monitor both the ECG of a horse and its physical activity.
• This system includes textile electrodes that are integrated for ECG acquisition, meaning they pick up the electrical signals from the horse’s heart.
• Additionally, it uses a triaxial accelerometer for movement monitoring—that is, this component of the system measures the speed and direction of the horse’s movements.

The Model and The Algorithm

• These two types of information—cardiovascular and movement data—are fed into a model that can estimate the influence of movement artifacts.
• Moreover, the researchers propose a new algorithm to identify and remove these movement artifacts from the ECG recordings.
• The algorithm is based on the Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT), a method commonly used in signal processing.

Results of the Study

• The application of this new algorithm resulted in a significant reduction of movement artifacts.
• The percentage of movement artifacts was more than 40% lower after the use of the algorithm, according to the analysis of seven hours of recordings.
• The research thus indicates that the newly proposed system and algorithm are more effective in reducing artifacts from equine ECG recordings acquired in free-movement conditions.