Heart Rate Calculation and R Peak Detection using Double Difference Method
ECG Signal is a non stationary signal i.e. frequency components varies with time. To analyse the ECG signal various methods are used like wavelet transform, Hilbert transform etc. This paper proposes a simple and efficient algorithm for the detection of R peaks from the loaded ECG data. The double difference method is used to find the R peaks. The proposed method has three stages: filtering, thresholding of the ECG data to identify the peaks with comparison in the QRS regions, and RR interval processing to accurate detection of the peaks. After detecting the RR interval, the heart rate can be obtained by applying simple formula. The performance of the algorithm is tested on arrhythmia data taken from MIT BIH database and then loaded signal is classified on the basis of heart rate.