Noisy channel detection using the common annihilator with an application to electrocardiograms

Signal quality assessment is an important issue as noisy channels could mean lost information and unreliable data. In the field of Electrocardiograms (ECG), this is also important as noise could affect the detection of transient cardiac conditions which occur in these noisy channels. In VPW-FRI, the common annihilator is used to decompose multichannel signals with common root locations. Using information from the common annihilating filter, this paper will show that poor quality or noisy signals can be classified from the noiseless signals. This is done through the fact that each channel contributes to the solution of a pulse location and the channels which contribute below a certain threshold are deemed to be noisy or of poor quality. We will show that our algorithm works to the point where VPW-FRI is able to distinguish the features of the signal well despite any noise present.