Rank-AdaptiveSignal Processing (RASP) A Subspace Approach To Biological Signal Analysis Part 11: Applications

R. J. Semnani, B. E Womack, and R. E. Barr Electrical Engineering Dept., The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX 78712 U.S.A.
Abstract
In many biomedical signal processing problems, the signal of interest is corrupted by noise and interference f m m f other sources. The nonlinear and time-varying nature o biological systems, inter- and intra-patient variability, constraints imposed by patient safety and the desire f o r less or noninvasive monitoring, exemplify the problems that must be overcome by signal processing. In Part II, we present expeiimental results that illustrate the usefulness of the subspace approach in a variety of practical applications. In contrast to linear time-invariant (LTI) and conventional adaptive jilters, the subspace approach requires no reference input or a priori knowledge of the frequency contents o the data. The signal and noise subspaces are determined f directly from the gaps in the singular value spectrum.

1. ]Introduction
In everyday clinical practice, biomedical signals play a key role in patient monitoring and diagnosis. Numerous techniques ranging from standard digital filtering to wavelets and artificial neural networks have been developed to help the clinician in the analysis and proper recognition of these waves. However, the nonlinear and time-varying nature of biological systems, inter- and intra-patient variability, constraints imposed by patient safety and the desire for less or noninvasive monitoring, as well as dearth of data for analysis, particularly under ideal (or normal) conditions, as detailed below, exemplify the problems that must be overcome by signal processing. In addition to noise, biomedical signals often interfere with one another. For example, Fetal QRS extraction is complicated by the presence of the maternal QRS as well as abdominal muscle noise. Respiration, cardiac contractions, and Mayer waves induce background thermal transients in the pulmonary artery that limit the accuracy and re-

producibility of cardiac output (CO) estimation by thermodilution, particularly with mini-injectates. The typical frequency overlap between biomedical signals and low signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio make linear timeinvariant (LTI) filters in the frequency domain essentially ineffective. In addition, almost all bilomedical signals have time-varying characteristics, i.e., spectrum, morphology, or duration. For example, the EEG local spectrum changes with time. The shape of the ECG beat, may change, slowly or abruptly, even in the same patient. These factors further contribute to thedifficultiesin proper clinical diagnosis. Adaptive techniques have proved to be particularly effective in tracking the changing signal characteristics. Conventional adaptive signal processing, based on stochastic gradient methods such as the Least-Mean-Square (LMS) algorithm and least squares (LS) techniques, minimize the error between the input signal and a reference input. Although in some applications it is possible to derive the reference signal directly from the input or use a recording of the same signal at a different position, primary issues in conventional adaptive techniques involve selection (ofthe reference input, convergence, and speed of adaptation. at In P r I [ll], we described the principles of a RankAdaptive Signal Processing (RASP) approach to biological signal analysis. In Part 11, we present applications of the subspace techniques to a variety of practical problems in biomedical signal processing.

2. EEG Analysis
Electroencephalogram (EEG), Generated by the nonlinear neuronal activities of the brain, particularly in the cerebral cortex, represents the hand writing of the brain as recorded from the scalp surface. Although EEG may contain transients such as spikes and spindles, it consists primarily of 4 rhythmic activities. These are the 6 (0.5-3.5 H ) (3.5-7.5Hz), Q (7.5-13.5 Hz), and p (13.5-30 Hz) z ,6 waves. However, extracerebral noise and nonstationary ar-

0-7803-65 14-3/00/$10.0002000 IEEE

1878

tifacts readily corrupt the EEG. In this section, we describe applicationof RASP as a digital notch filter to eliminate 60Hz powerline interference [7] from the EEG, and consider enhancement of the EEG signal in white Gaussian noise.

-50 100

MO

300

400

uy)

em

700

BM

gm

loo0

40

M
0

-20
-40

Figure 2. (a) SV spectrum of clean EEG (b) SV spectrum of noisy EEG (c) SV spectrum of the 6&Hz noise (d) SV spectrum of the EEG filtered with RASP
100

200

3M)

400

so0

EJ #

700

800

900

loo0

Figure 1. (a) Original EEG signal (b) noisy EEG (c) EEG filtered with RASP
Fig. 1 shows an EEG signal contaminated by powerline interferencecentered at 60 Hz [4]. Although difficult to see both in Fig. 2(b), the first two singular values (SV)of the noisy EEG are at u1 = 8,612.7 and 6 2 = 8,594.7, respectively. The large gap following u1 and u2 defines the desired signal and noise subspaces and suggests a rank-2 subspace projection Pa to eliminate the powerline noise as shown in Fig. l(c). The SV spectrum of the noise in Fig. 2(c) shows two singular values at ul,noise = 8,611.6 and b2,noise = 8,593.5, The presence of while the remaining are on the O( these two singular values in the noise spectrum and their absence from the spectrum of the clean EEG in Fig. 2(a), confirm that they correspond to the noise. However, prior knowledge of the noise (SV) spectrum is not required in any applicationsince the desired signal and noise subspacesmay be determined directly from the gaps in the SV spectrum of the data. The effect of RASP in enhancing EEG signals corrupted by Gaussian noise is illustrated in Fig. 3. The computer generated Gaussian noise and its singular value spectrum are shown in Figs. 3(b) and 4(b), respectively. It can be seen that, in contrast to the SV spectrum of the 60-Hz powerline noise, the spectrum of Gaussian noise is distributedover all its singular values. Thus, the wideband, in an energy sense, characteristic of Gaussian noise makes it more dif-

ficult to enhance the signal with RASP, particularly at low signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios. Nevertheless, the subspace projection in Fig. 3(d) significantly outperforms the lowpass filter in Fig. 3(e).

3. Noisy Pneumotach
This example demonstrates application of the subspace method to a noisy pneuomotach signal sampled at 30 Hz. The pneumotach signal, shown in Fig. 5(a) consists of normal breathing, a period of no breathing, followed by the resumption of breathing. Fig. 5(b) shows a significant reduction in noise following application of RASP.

4. ECG Analysis
The noise in the ECG data shown in Fig. 6 is eliminated by using a rank-6 projection P6 onto the dominant 6dimensional subspace. Here, the noise and the ECG signal actually live in the dominant and subdominant subspaces, respectively. Maternal abdominal ECG recordings provide a convenient and noninvasive method to detect the fetal QRS complex during prenatal care. The fetal heart rate is also indispensable during labor and delivery. However, abdominal ECG tracings contain concomitant noise caused by muscle activity and fetal motion, as well as a strong maternal

Source:

~~

gopher://zima.cae.wisc.edu:70/1 I/ece/biomed/signals/resp/CHAN7 .TXT

1879

x I' O
-100

0
-1

'

-3ca
I I I I

I
-500

fal20030O400500Mx)70080O9001Mx)
I I
I I

I"

.
I

- . , .
"

. ,

'I

:::b
-Iw -3w

0
-500 400

200

400

600

800

1000

1Mo

0
-1'
I
I 1

Figure 5. Pneumotach signal sampled at 30

I
I I

Qlo'

IC0

200

3W

400

500

Mx)

7CQ

800

900

10%

Hz: (a) the original noisy signlal, (b) the signal

following application of RASP

0
-1

1 ~ 2 0 0 3 0 0 4 0 0 5 0 0 M x ) 7 C Q 8 0 0 9 0 0 1 ~

IFigure 3 (a) Original EEG (b) Gaussian noise . (c) Noisy EEG (d) EEG filtered with RASP (e) bow-pass filtered EEG

0.1

(b) -

Figure6. (a) Noisy ECG sampledat 100 Hz,(b) Filtered ECG using RASP

no

50

100

150

200

2y)

300

350

400

450

500

- , :0

50

100

150

ZW

250

300

350

400

450

MO

Figure 4. (a) SV spectrum of clean EEG in Fig. 3 (b) SV spectrum of Gaussian noise (c) SV spectrum of noisy EEG

heartbeat that is usually 2 to 10 time,s greater than the fetal beat in amplitude [ 141. Due to the ,small size of the fetal heart and the intervening tissue, background noise is often (at least) comparable to the fetal signal in (root mean square) amplitude [14, lo]. Furthermore, because of strong wideband contributions and spectral overlap between the three components, conventionallinear time-invariant (LTI)filters in the frequency domain are not effective. Fig. 7 shows samples of single-channel ECG tracings recorded by Hofmeister [6] using abdominal and cervical electrodes. A Pllo projection significantly reduced the maternal heartbeat so that the fetal QRS complex is clearly discemible. However, as

1880

essary. The subspace approach presented here, unlike [2], does not require the use of multiple leads and is independent of any particular electrode configuration or recording technique.

5. Improvement of Thermodilution
First described by Fegler in 1954 [3], Thermodilution (TD) is now considered the gold standard in CO determination. Cardiac output, as determined by the StewartHamilton equation, is inversely related to the area of the transient decline in the pulmonary artery (PA) temperature caused by an injection of a saline or glucose solution into the right atrium [5].

Figure 7. Fetal heart rate extraction: (a) composite maternaufetal tracing (b) fetal signal following application of RASP

CO =

Ci vi (Tbaseline - E) Pb c S r ( T b a s e 1 i n e - Tb(t)) b dt
pi

(1)

5 c

where CO is the cardiac output (Vmin), and 1;. are the volume and temperature of the injectate, Tbasellne is the reference baseline pulmonary artery blood temperature, T ( t ) b is the blood temperature at time t in Celsius, Pj and pa, Cj and c are the injectate and blood densities and heat capacb ities respectively. The major source of error in TD is the nonlinear PA thermal noise due to respiration, cardiac contractions and Mayer waves. The amplitude and frequency of respiratory noise is approximately on the order of 10mOc near the 0.2 Hz frequency. In addition to respiration, cardiac contractions (10 moc in the 1-4 Hz range), and Mayer waves ( 100 moc at about 0.02 Hz) contribute to the thermal noise [ 1, 131.
I re JW(

Figure 8. Comparison of SV spectrums shows a slower decline in the SV spectrum and differences in the gap sizes due to the SNR: (a) SV spectrum of ECG in Fig. 6, (b) SV spectrum of the FetaVmaternaldata in Fig. 7.

is the case here, the ability to completely eliminate the muscle noise is hindered due to the threshold effect of SVDbased subspace techniques [ 121 at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), manifested in the slower decline (Fig. 8) in the singular value spectrum of the fetal data in comparison to that of the noisy ECG shown in Fig. 6. It should be noted that although the Pllo projection also reduces the amplitude of the fetal QRS complex, the fetal/matemal QRS ratio is significantly enhanced. During labor and delivery, where abdominal contractions result in a great deal of muscle noise, it is only the fetal heart rate (FHR) that is of interest to the clinician and the FECG amplitude or shape is often not nec-

Figure 9. The recorded TD data and its corresponding signal and noise components obtained with RASP
Here, the example in Fig. 9 demonstrates the application of RASP in the decomposition of a 1 cc thermodilution data from a porcine model into its component signals. The performance of the technique was similar with r = 2 and r = 3,

1881

however, it deteriorated significantly with other values of r. At very low signal-to-noise ratio, the threshold effect of SVD-based techniques causes a degradation in performance of RASP [12]. This is demonstrated by the slower decline in the SV spectrums and the gap magnitudes of a 10 cc versus a 1 cc thermodilution signal in Fig. 10. The performance (bias) of the method improves at higher SNR obtained with 2 cc or larger injectates.

cially Dr. Wilfried Philips for generously providing some of the data used in this work.

References
S . Afonso, G. G. Rowe, C. A. Castillo, andC. W. Crumpton. Intravascular and intracardiacblood temperatures in man. J. Appl. Physiol., 17:706-708.1962. D. Callaerts, B. De Moor, J. Vanlderville, and W. Sansen. Comparisonof SVD methods to extract the fetal electrocardiograms from cutaneous electrode: signals. Med. Biol. Eng. Comput., 28:217-224,May 1990. G. Fegler. Measurement of cardiac output in anesthetized animals by a thermo-dilution method. Q. J. Exp Physiol., 39:153-164,1954. M.Ferdjallah and R. E. Barr. Adaptive digital notch filter design on the unit circle for the removal of powerline noise from biomedical signals. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., 41(6):529-536, June 1994. W. Ganz and H. J. C. Swan. Measurementof blood flow by thermodilution. Am. J. cardiol., 29:241-246,1972. J. E Hofmeister, J. C. Slocumb, L. M. Kottmann, J. B. Picchiottino, and D. G. Ellis. A noninvasive method for recording the electrical activity of the human uterus in vivo. Biomed. Instrum. Technol.,page 391, September 1994. J. C. Huhta and J. G. Webster. 6&Hz interference in electrocardiography. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., BME-20(2):91101, March 1973. S. Y Kung, K. S. Arun, and D. V. Bhaskar Rao. State. space and singular-value decomposition-based approximation methods for the harmonicretrieval problem. J. Opt. Soc. Am., 73(12):1799-1811, December 1983. W. Philips. Adaptive noise removal from biomedical signals using warped polynomials. IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng., 43(5):480-492, May 1996. M. Richter, T. Schreiber, and D. T. Kaplan. ECG extraction with nonlinear state-spaceprojecticins. IEEE Trans.Biomed. Eng., 45(1):133-136, January 19911. R. J. Semnani and B. E Womack Rank-Adaptive Signal Processing (RASP). A subspace approach to biological signal analysis. Part I: Principles. Proc. 33rdAsilomar Conference on Signals, Systems & Computers.,1:82&824, October 1999. D. W. Tufts,A. C. Kot, and R. J. Vaccaro.The threshold analysis of SVD-basedalgorithms. Proc. ICASSP,4:241&-2419, April 1988. H.U. Wessel, M. H. Paul, G. W. James, and A. R. Grahn. Limitations of thermal dilution curves for cardiac output determination. J. Appl. Physiol, 30643452,1971. B. Widrow, J. Glover Jr, J. McCool, J. Kaunitz, C. Williams, R. Heam, J. Zeidler, E Dong JR, and R. Goodlin. Adaptive . f noise cancelling: Principles and applications. Proc. o IEEE, 63(12):1692-1716, December 1975.

4w,-

3ml

4
Figure 10. Comparison of SV spectrums shows a slower decline in the SV spectrum and differences in the gap sizes at different SNR: (a) SV spectrum of a 10 cc TD signal, (b) SV spectrum of a 1 cc TD signal

6. Conclusions
We demonstrated a variety of practical applications of the subspace approach in biomedical signal analysis through simulated and recorded data. In contrast to linear timeinvariant (LTI)and conventional adaptive filters, the subspace approach to signal processing requires no prior knowledge of the frequency contents of the data or a suitable reference input. The signal and noise subspaces are determined from the gaps in the singular value spectrum of the data. Since frequency resolution in the Fourier domain is limited by the reciprocal of the observation interval length [8], the super resolution rendered by SVD is particularly useful at low sampling frequencies and for short data records, as demonstrated in Fig. 6. Since no prior statistical information is assumed about the signal or noise, subspace-based methods are applicable to other signal processing problems.

Acknowledgment
We would like to thank Dr. John K. Hayes, Dr. K. R. Foster, D .John Hofmeister, Dr. Thomas Schreiber, and esper

1882