CPR artefact removal from VF signals by means of an adaptive Kalman filter using the chest compression frequency as reference signal

Chest compressions during Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) generate important artefacts which impede the correct analysis of the ECG signal by an automated external defibrillator (AED). The suppression of the CPR artefact is thus necessary during resuscitation. The filtering technique proposed in the present paper is based on a Kalman adaptive scheme where the CPR artefact model follows the instantaneous frequency of the chest compressions, while the VF signal is modeled as a sum of two sinusoidal signals. The good results obtained for the increase of the signal to noise ratio and the excellent sensitivity scores provided by a commercial AED on the cleaned VF signals certifies the value of the method.