Application of Indices Characterizing the Shape of a Signal for Automatic Identification of Artifacts in Impedance Cardiography

The aim of this work was to introduce five form factors describing the shape pattern of the impedance cardiography (ICG) signal during one cardiac cycle. These form factors were used for automatic classification of ICG heart evolution as either valid or artifact. For each tested cardiac cycle in a verified ICG signal, the values of the form factors were calculated and compared with the respective form factor for the pattern. We evaluated the ability of each form factor to detect artifacts based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) method.