REMOVING THE MHD ARTIFACTS FROM THE ECG SIGNAL FOR CARDIAC MRI SYNCHRONIZATION

D Abi-Abdallah (1) , Agnès Drochon (1) , V Robin (2) , P Poulet (3) , O Fokapu (1)

1 BMBI - Biomécanique et Bioingénierie
2 LMAC - Laboratoire de Mathématiques Appliquées de Compiègne
3 Université Louis Pasteur - Strasbourg I

Blood flow in high static magnetic fields induces elevated voltages that disrupt the ECG signal recorded simultaneously during MRI scans for synchronization purposes. This is known as the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effect, it increases the amplitude of the T wave, thus hindering correct R peak detection. In this paper, we present an algorithm for extracting an efficient reference signal from an ECG contaminated by the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) environment, that performs a good separation of the R-wave and the MHD artifacts. The proposed signal processing method is based on sub-band decomposition using the wavelet transform, and has been tested on human and small rodents ECG signals acquired during MRI scans in various magnetic field intensities. The results showed an almost flawless trigger generation in fields up to 4.7 Tesla during the three tested imaging sequences (GE, FSE and IRSE)

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]

D Abi-Abdallah, Agnès Drochon, V Robin, P Poulet, O Fokapu. REMOVING THE MHD ARTIFACTS FROM THE ECG SIGNAL FOR CARDIAC MRI SYNCHRONIZATION. FMBE Proceedings of the 3rd European Medical & Biological Engineering Conference, Nov 2005, Prague, Czech Republic. ⟨hal-01084362⟩