Electrocardiogram derived respiration from QRS slopes: Evaluation with stress testing recordings

A method for respiratory rate estimation from electrocardiogram (ECG), based on variations in QRS complexes slopes, is evaluated over stress testing recordings. Besides the 12 standard, and the 3 vectorcardiogram (VCG), 2 additional leads derived from the VCG are analyzed. A total of 34 slope series were studied, 2 for each lead: slopes between the peaks of the Q and R waves, and between the peaks of the R and S waves. Respiratory rate is estimated by using a time-frequency based algorithm which can combine information from several derived respiration signals. Evaluation was performed over a database containing ECG and respiratory signals simultaneously recorded from 30 subjects spontaneously breathing during a stress test. Respiratory rate estimation is performed with information of 4 different combinations of QRS slope series. The best results in respiratory rate estimation error terms are -1.07 ± 8.86% (-11.47 ± 37.97 mHz). These results suggest that proposed methods based on QRS slopes are highly suitable for respiratory rate estimation from ECG signal, specially at very non-stationary and noise scenarios as stress test.