Ventricular fibrillation detection in ventricular fibrillation signals corrupted by cardiopulmonary resuscitation artifact

This study is focused on the removal of artifacts due to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on ventricular fibrillation ECG signals. The aim is to allow a reliable analysis of the cardiac rhythm by an AED or the defibrillation success analysis during CPR episodes. The research is based on a human model for the CPR artifact and the VF ECG signals. The test signals were generated adding the CPR artifact (noise) to the VF (signal), with a known signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR). The results of the adaptive Kalman filtering have been obtained according to three different levels: SNR improvement; sensitivity improvement in the AED algorithm for the detection of shockable rhythm; and variations of the significant frequencies, compared to the values obtained with the original VF signals. In all cases, remarkable results have been achieved regarding to the efficiency in the artifact removal.