Real-time Evaluation of ECG Acquisition Systems through Signal Quality Assessment in Horses during Submaximal Treadmill Test

This paper reports on a novel real time index designed to assess the quality of electrocardiographic (ECG) traces recorded in a group of five horses during a submaximal treadmill test procedure. During the experimental protocol two ECG monitoring systems were simultaneously applied to the animals. The first system was equipped with textile electrodes while the second one with standard red-dot electrodes. The procedure comprised four phases with an increased treadmill velocity, specifically, Walk 1, Trot 1, Trot 2 and Gallop. Three signal quality levels have been fixed according to the amount of noise present in the ECG trace: good (G), acceptable (A), and unacceptable (U). Moreover, a statistical comparison between textile and red-dot electrodes has been performed in terms of percentage of signal belonging to each class. Even if preliminary, results showed that in each experimental phase textile electrodes are more robust to movement artifacts with respect to the reddot showing a significant evidence of their better performance. These results enable to design robust wearable monitoring systems suitable to improve the quality of collected ECG, reducing the great amount of motion artifacts due to red-dot electrode application and leading to a more accurate diagnosis of high speed arrhythmias.