Signal Processing Guided by Physiology: Making the Most of Cardiorespiratory Signals [Life Sciences]

Biomedical signals convey information about biological systems and can emanate from sources of such varied origins as electrical, mechanical, or chemical. In particular, biomedical signals can provide relevant information on the function of the human body, e.g., related to muscle contraction, neuronal activity, or heart beating, to name a few. This information, however, may not be apparent in the signal due to measurement noise, presence of signals coming from other interacting subsystems, or simply because it is not visible to the human eye. Signal processing is usually required to extract the relevant information from biomedical signals and convert it into meaningful data that physicians can interpret.