Looking at cardiac data processing, feature extraction, and analysis in Python
Here we look at an overview of the Electrocardiogram (ECG), its history, and analyzing and extracting features from ECG data.
Cardiac data can mean a lot of things. Generally it refers to data from or relating to the heart or cardiovascular system. The term cardiac comes from the Greek word kardia, and roughly translating to heart.
Here we’ll focus on looking at the electrocardiogram or ECG (or German elektrokardiogram- EKG) which measures the electrical activity of the heart over time. This non-invasive measurement provides critical insights into heart rhythm, function, and overall cardiovascular/ mental health.
The term electrocardiogram roughly breaks into:
The typical ECG signal we know today is credited to work by Willem Einthoven between 1893-1895 (Einthoven, 1895). Einthoven, innovated on the work of Augustus Desire Waller (who introduced the term “electrocardiogram” ) and others by developing more sensitive and smaller detection instrumentation, which he called the string galvanometer (Einthoven, 1912).
With more sensitive equipment, Einthoven was able to discern more distinct cardiac peaks, which he labeled as the PQRST peaks. The naming convention is debated but it’s believed to be inspired by Einthoven’s study of work by Descartes (Hurst, 1998). Some of the earliest ECG machines were huge, required multiple operators, and patients had to have their arms and legs submerged in electrolyte (salty water) solutions. Einthoven was even approached by Charles Darwin’s son, Horace Darwin, to help sell and distribute the ECG machines (Burnett, 1985).
The ECG waveform reflects different phases of the heart’s contraction. Each of the PQRST points on the ECG waveform correspond to:
Since its inception ECG acquisition has become digitized and miniaturized to the point where we can fit acquisition tools into a smart watch. Apple’s and other companies’ inclusion of such monitoring and diagnostic tools helped to democratize and increase access to cardiac health monitoring. Studies like the Apple Heart Study have demonstrated that wearable technology can accurately detect irregular heart rhythms, leading to earlier identification of conditions like atrial fibrillation and empowering users to take proactive steps in managing their heart health.
ECG is a part of cardiac monitoring which is a broad term that encompasses a variety of methods for monitoring and assessing cardiac health. Taking a step back, we see ECG falls under EXG techniques, which is a term used to describe a group of non-invasive/minimally invasive methods that measure electrical activity in the body.
For example, some EXG techniques include:
Note: While the heart is classified as a muscle, its muscle tissue differs significantly from skeletal muscle. The heart muscle cells, known as cardiomyocytes, and tissue have distinct anatomical features that set it apart from other muscles. Unlike skeletal muscle, which requires conscious control for contraction, cardiomyocytes possess the unique ability to contract and relax autonomously, without voluntary input. This fundamental difference is one of the key factors that distinguishes electrocardiography (ECG) from electromyography (EMG).
Other methods that monitor cardiac activity include:
The data that we’ll be working with here comes from one of my experiments looking at EEG, ECG, and vigilant behavior concurrently over time (Gebodh et al., 2021). We collected EEG and lead I ECG data over a 70-minute period while participants played a ball moving game and at times were stimulated with low intensity electrical stimulation (Check out my chapters on brain stimulation here (Moreno-Duarte et al., 2014) and here (Gebodh et al., 2019) ). We’ll focus on the first 20 minutes of data since its free from artifacts of electrical stimulation.
When working with signals it’s good practice to have a processing pipeline and adjust as needed. Here our processing pipeline will be to:
We’ll start off by downloading and importing the data.
The data are uploaded to the OpenNeuro database, which supports neuroscience data sharing, reproducibility, and analysis. Our data can be viewed here. The data are divided into different folders, each corresponding to a different participant (e.g. sub-01 corresponds to participant 1). Subfolders corresponding to different sessions (e.g. ses-02 corresponds to session 2).
To download the data, we can use curl, which is a command line tool for transferring data.
For example in a Command Line Interface (CLI), like command prompt etc., we can run the following command to download the data to a specific folder:
curl <DATA URL> -o <OUTPUT FILE PATH & NAME>The data files are broken into different files, each containing a different type of data. The main data files are:
.set and .fdt - contains the recorded timerseries data and metadata.json - contains metadata for the experiment.tsv - contains the events data (triggers) for the timeseries and EEG electrode locationsThe URL for our data can be broken down as follows for participant 22, session 1:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/openneuro.org/ds003670/sub-022/ses-01/eeg/sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.jsonSo, the full DATA URL for the file we want to download is:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/openneuro.org/ds003670/sub-022/ses-01/eeg/sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.jsonWe can then download the data to a specific output folder with specific file name by using the -o flag:
./temp_data/sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.jsonSo, the full OUTPUT FILE PATH & NAME for the data is:
./temp_data/sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.jsoncurl command to download the data to the output file path and name:
import os
import subprocess
# Define the URL and output file path
file_name = "sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.json"
url = "https://s3.amazonaws.com/openneuro.org/ds003670/sub-022/ses-01/eeg/" + file_name
output_file_path = os.path.join("./temp_data/", file_name )
# Download the file using curl
subprocess.run(["curl", url, "-o", output_file_path])
# OR
os.system(f"curl {url} -o {output_file_path}") #Works but not recommendedOnce the data are downloaded, we can double check to see what files were downloaded.
for item in os.listdir("./temp_data/"):
print(f"* {item}")* sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.fdt
* sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.json
* sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_eeg.set
* sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_electrodes.tsv
* sub-022_ses-01_task-GXtESCTT_events.tsvOnce the data is downloaded, we can import it using mne. From there we can extract segments to process and visualize.
import mne
import numpy as np
import bokeh
temp_folder = './temp_data'
file_in = 'sub-001_ses-001_task-rest_eeg'
ecg_electrodes = 32 # ECG electrode
# Load the data
# Set preload=False to use memory mapping (lazy loading)
raw = mne.io.read_raw_eeglab(f'{temp_folder}{file_in}.set', preload=False)
# Load the TSV file - contains events (remove `_eeg` from the end of the file name)
events_df = pd.read_csv(f'{temp_folder}{file_in[:-3]}events.tsv', sep='\t')
sfreq = raw.info['sfreq']# Data sampling frequency
# Extract the ECG data for the first 10 seconds
start, stop = 0, 30 # in seconds
data, times = raw[ecg_electrodes, start * sfreq :stop * sfreq ]
# Plot the ECG data with Bokeh
p = bokeh.plotting.figure(title="EEG Data",
x_axis_label='Time (s)',
y_axis_label='Amplitude')
p.line(times, data[0])
show(p)Let’s look at a snippet of the data.
What do we see?
If we look closely at the signal, we notice a few things:
We can attenuate (reduce) some of this unwanted activity in the ECG signal by filtering it. We’ll apply a high pass filter to remove the low frequency noise (drift, offset etc.) and a low pass filter to remove the high frequency noise (EMG noise etc.). It’s important to note that filtering can distort the signal and attenuate fiducial points on the ECG waveform so the bandlimits of the filters should be chosen carefully. Typically, most of the useful frequency content of an ECG waveform is between 0.5-40 Hz.
Here we’ll use the Butterworth filter (an IIR filter) to filter the ECG signal. The Butterworth filter has a maximally flat frequency response in the passband, meaning it results in minimal distortion to the signal. Other types of IIR filters include the Chebyshev filter, Bessel filter, and elliptic filter.
There are many other filtering techniques that can be used to remove noise from/clean ECG data (other than high/low/band pass filtering). These include (reviewed in Chatterjee et al. (2020) ):
# Import libraries
from scipy import signal
# Filtering
# High pass filter
def high_pass_filter(data, fs, cutoff, order=4):
#Design filter with Butterworth filter function
b, a = signal.butter(order, cutoff/(fs/2), 'highpass')
return signal.filtfilt(b, a, data)#Filter forward and backward
# Low pass filter
def low_pass_filter(data, fs, cutoff, order=3):
#Design filter with Butterworth filter function
b, a = signal.butter(order, cutoff/(fs/2), 'lowpass')
return signal.filtfilt(b, a, data)#Filter forward and backward
# Apply filters
filtered_hp = high_pass_filter(data, fs, 0.5)
filtered_lp = low_pass_filter(data, fs, 25)When we filter the signal, we get:
What do we see?
After filtering we see that:
We can do more processing to clean the signal further, but this should be good enough to extract some useful features from the signal.
Downsampling is the process of reducing the sampling rate of a signal. This is done to reduce the amount of data that needs to be processed, and to make the signal easier to work with. For example, if we downsample our signal from 2000 Hz to 100 Hz, we are reducing the amount of data by a factor of 20 (2000 Hz/ 100 Hz = 20 reduction factor).
Generally, when downsampling follow the rules of the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, which states that the sampling rate of a signal must be at least twice the highest frequency component of the signal of interest.
For example, if I recorded a signal that I know has a maximum frequency of 100 Hz, then I would need to sample the signal at least 200 Hz (100 Hz* 2 = 200 Hz). If I oversampled my signal, I could downsample it to about 200 Hz and still be able to reconstruct the original signal, any lower than that and I could lose information.
import scipy.signal as signal
fs = 1000
fs_down = 100
#Calculate the downsampling factor
downsample_factor = fs // fs_down
# 1000 // 100 = 10, so downsample by factor of 10
#Downsample the signal
data_ds = resample_poly(data, up=1, down=downsample_factor)Below is an extreme example of downsampling, where we downsample from 2000 Hz to 150 Hz.
What do we see?
After downsampling (from 2000 Hz to 150 Hz) the signal we that:
Now that we’ve cleaned the data, we can extract features from it.
One of the most common features used in ECG analysis is the heart rate, which can be extracted in a number of ways. The most common way is to use the R-peaks from the detected QRS complex.
The Pan-Tompkins algorithm, developed in 1985 by Jiapu Pan and Willis J Tompkins (Pan & Tompkins, 1985) is one of the most common ways to extract the QRS-complex, get the R-peaks and then calculate the heart rate.
The algorithm can be broken down into the following steps:
Signal here refers to the outcome from each previous step.
For example, we can code the Pan-Tompkins algorithm in Python and run it on our dataset to detect QRS complexes and the R-peaks. From there we can use the R-peaks to calculate the heart rate, heart rate variability, and other interesting metrics.
#Simplified Pan-Tompkins algorithm
class PanTompkinsQRS:
"""
Implementation of Pan-Tompkins QRS detection algorithm
"""
def __init__(self, sampling_rate=250):
self.sampling_rate = sampling_rate
# Bandpass filter (5-15 Hz)
def bandpass_filter(self, signal):
"""
Bandpass filter (5-15 Hz)
"""
nyquist_freq = self.sampling_rate / 2
low = 5 / nyquist_freq
high = 15 / nyquist_freq
b, a = butter(1, [low, high], btype='band')
ecg_filt = filtfilt(b, a, signal)
return ecg_filt
# Differentiation
def differentiation(self, signal):
"""
Differentiation
"""
ecg_diff = np.diff(signal)
#Pad with a number at the beginning
pad_loc = 0 #Index to add pad
pad_val = ecg_diff[0]
ecg_diff = np.insert(ecg_diff , pad_loc, pad_val)
return ecg_diff
# Squaring
def squaring(self, signal):
"""
Squaring
"""
ecg_sqr = signal ** 2
return ecg_sqr
# Moving Window Integration/ Moving average
def moving_average(self, signal,
window_size=0.150 #In sec
):
"""
Moving average
Parameters:
- window_size: in sec
"""
window_size = int(window_size * self.sampling_rate)
kernel = np.ones(window_size) / window_size
ecg_mov_avg = np.convolve(signal, kernel, mode='same')
return ecg_mov_avg
#Find Peaks within the signal
def find_R_peaks(self, processed_signal, raw_signal):
"""
Find R-peaks using thresholding.
- `processed_signal`: The moving average output (used for thresholding)
- `raw_signal`: The original filtered ECG signal (to find the true R-wave)
"""
peak_distance = int(0.250 * self.sampling_rate) # ~250ms between heartbeats
peak_prominence = 0.5 * np.max(processed_signal) # Dynamic threshold
# 1. Detect approximate peaks in processed signal
peaks, _ = find_peaks(processed_signal, distance=peak_distance, prominence=peak_prominence)
# 2. Search for the true R-peak in the raw ECG signal
r_peaks = []
search_window = int(0.050 * self.sampling_rate) # Search ±50ms around each detected peak
for peak in peaks:
search_region = raw_signal[max(0, peak - search_window):min(len(raw_signal), peak + search_window)]
true_r_peak = np.argmax(search_region) + (peak - search_window) # Shift index to raw signal
r_peaks.append(true_r_peak)
return np.array(r_peaks)
# QRS detection
def qrs_detection(self, signal):
"""
QRS detection
"""
signal = signal - np.mean(signal)
ecg_filt = self.bandpass_filter(signal)
ecg_diff = self.differentiation(ecg_filt)
ecg_sqr = self.squaring(ecg_diff)
ecg_mov_avg = self.moving_average(ecg_sqr)
ecg_r_peaks = self.find_R_peaks(ecg_mov_avg, signal)
# Return the results as a dictionary
return {
"signal": signal,
"ecg_filt": ecg_filt,
"ecg_diff": ecg_diff,
"ecg_sqr": ecg_sqr,
"ecg_mov_avg": ecg_mov_avg,
"ecg_r_peaks": ecg_r_peaks
}
What do we see?
From the plot, we can see that:
There are several updated algorithms for automatic extraction of R-peaks and the QRS complex from the ECG signal. In Python the NeuroKit2 package contains a function for the Pan-Tompkins algorithm along with other updated algorithms.
Here we’ll use the NeuroKit2 package to extract the R-peaks and QRS complex from the ECG signal and run some basic analysis to get HR and HRV.
#====================================================
# Data Extraction
#----------------------------------------------------
# Get some data
raw, events_df = load_data(file_in, './temp_data/')
sfreq = fs = raw.info['sfreq']# Data sampling frequency
# Extract the EEG data
start, stop = 5, 15 # in seconds
data, times = raw[32, start * sfreq :stop * sfreq ]
data = data[0]*1e3
fs = fs_down = 250
#Downsample
data = downsample_to_frequency(data , sfreq, fs_down)
data = signal.detrend(data)
times = np.linspace(start,stop, num=len(data))
#____________________________________________________
# Process ecg
ecg_cleaned = nk.ecg_clean(data, sampling_rate=fs)
signals_out_pre, info_pre = nk.ecg_process(ecg_cleaned , sampling_rate=fs)
nk.ecg_plot(signals_out_pre, info_pre)
fig = plt.gcf()
# Set the figure size
fig.set_size_inches(12, 10) # Adjust the size as needed
# Show the plot
plt.show()
What do we see?
From the plot above, we can see that:
#====================================================
# Data Extraction
#----------------------------------------------------
# Get some data
raw, events_df = load_data(file_in, './temp_data/')
sfreq = fs = raw.info['sfreq']# Data sampling frequency
# Extract the EEG data
start, stop = 0, 60*10 # in seconds
data, times = raw[32, start * sfreq :stop * sfreq ]
data = data[0]*1e3
fs = fs_down = 250
#Downsample
data = downsample_to_frequency(data , sfreq, fs_down)
data = signal.detrend(data)
times = np.linspace(start,stop, num=len(data))
#____________________________________________________
# Clean signal and Find peaks
ecg_cleaned = nk.ecg_clean(data, sampling_rate=fs)
peaks, info = nk.ecg_peaks(ecg_cleaned, sampling_rate=fs, correct_artifacts=True)
# Compute HRV indices
hrv_indices = nk.hrv(peaks, sampling_rate=fs, show=True)
fig = plt.gcf()
# Set the figure size
fig.set_size_inches(12, 10) # Adjust the size as needed
# Show the plot
plt.show()
What do we see?
Here we look at a 10-minute segment of ECG data.
From the plot above, we can see that:
For the HR and HRV data extraction, we obtained cardiac metrics from the time domain and frequency domain.
Mean and Median RR Interval
This is the average time between all of the RR intervals (\(\overline{RR}\)) in the given data segment. We calculate it as:
\[ \text{Mean RR Interval} = \overline{RR} = \frac{1}{n} \sum_{i=1}^{n} RR_i \]
\[ \text{Median RR Interval} = \begin{cases} RR_{ \frac{n+1} {2} }, & \text{if } n \text{ is odd} \\[10pt] \frac{ \ RR_{ \frac{n}{2} } + RR_{ \frac{n}{2} + 1} }{2}, & \text{if } n \text{ is even} \end{cases} \]
where \(RR_i\) is the \(i^{th}\) RR interval, and \(n\) is the number of RR intervals.
For our data:
Standard Deviation of RR Intervals (SDNN)
The standard deviation of all RR intervals provides insight into heart rate variability. We calculate it as:
\[ \text{SDNN} = \sqrt{\frac{1}{n-1} \sum_{i=1}^{n} (RR_i - \overline{RR})^2} \]
where \(RR_i\) is the \(i^{th}\) RR interval, \(\overline{RR}\) is the mean RR interval, and \(n\) is the number of RR intervals.
For our data:
Root Mean Square of Successive Differences (RMSSD)
This metric provides information about the variability in the time between consecutive RR intervals. We calculate it as: \[ \text{RMSSD} = \sqrt{\frac{1}{n-1} \sum_{i=1}^{n-1} (RR_{i+1} - RR_i)^2} \] where \(RR_i\) is the \(i^{th}\) RR interval, and \(n\) is the number of RR intervals.
For our data:
Percentage of RR Interval Differences > 50 ms (pNN50)
This metric quantifies the percentage of consecutive RR intervals that differ by more than 50 ms. We calculate it as: \[ \text{NN50} = \sum_{i=1}^{n-1} \mathbb{1}_{|RR_i - RR_{i+1}| > 50} \]
\[ \text{pNN50} = \frac{\text{NN50}}{n-1} \times 100% \]
where \(NN50\) is the number of consecutive RR intervals that differ by more than 50 ms.
For our data:
Total Power (TP)
This metric represents the total power in the frequency domain. We calculate it as: \[ \text{TP} = \int_{0}^{0.5} P(f) \, df \] where \(P(f)\) is the power spectral density(PSD) of the RR intervals.
For our data:
Low Frequency Power (LF)
This metric represents the power in the low frequency range (0.04-0.15 Hz). We calculate it as:
\[ \text{LF Power} = \int_{0.04}^{0.15} P(f) \, df \]
where \(P(f)\) is the power spectral density(PSD) of the RR intervals.
For our data:
High Frequency Power (HF)
This metric represents the power in the high frequency range (0.15-0.4 Hz). We calculate it as:
\[ \text{HF Power} = \int_{0.15}^{0.40} P(f) \, df \]
where \(P(f)\) is the power spectral density(PSD) of the RR intervals.
For our data:
Low Frequency/High Frequency Ratio (LF/HF)
This metric represents the ratio of high frequency power to low frequency power. We calculate it as: \[ \text{LF/HF Ratio} = \frac{LF_{power}}{HF_{power}} \]
For our data:
| Mean RR Interval | Median RR Interval | SDNN | RMSSD | pNN50 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1066.86 | 1072 | 48.7062 | 44.8448 | 24.2424 |
| Total Power | Low Freq Power | High Freq Power | Low Freq/High Freq Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.0527402 | 0.0196355 | 0.0184252 | 1.06569 |
The electrocardiogram (ECG) has become a gold standard for monitoring cardiac and overall health, providing valuable insights beyond traditional diagnostics. We explored how ECG data can be processed to extract meaningful physiological markers such as heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), which are key indicators used to detect arrhythmias, autonomic nervous system activity, and mental health states.
With advancements in machine learning and wearable technology, ECG analysis is evolving beyond conventional applications. AI-driven algorithms can enhance early disease detection, personalized health monitoring, and real-time stress and wellness assessment. The integration of ECG data with machine learning not only refines diagnostics but also opens new frontiers in preventative healthcare, digital therapeutics, and remote patient monitoring. This paves the way for continuous, intelligent ECG monitoring; empowering individuals to proactively manage their heart health and overall well-being.
@misc{Gebodh2025FromHeartBeatstoAlgorithmsWithECGData,
title = {From Heart Beats to Algorithms With ECG Data},
author = {Nigel Gebodh},
year = {2025},
url = {https://ngebodh.github.io/projects/Short_dive_posts/ECG_analysis/ECG_proc.html},
note = {Published: February 10, 2025}
}