Observer of autonomic cardiac outflow based on blind source separation of ECG parameters

We present a novel method which provides an observer of the autonomic cardiac outflow using heartbeat intervals (RR) and QT intervals. The model of the observer is inferred from qualitative physiological knowledge. It consists in a problem of blind source separation of noisy mixtures which is resolved by a simple and robust algorithm. The robustness of the algorithm has been assessed by numerical simulations in adverse noisy environments. In clinical applications, we have validated the observer on subjects exposed to experimental conditions known to elicit sympathetic or parasympathetic response.     

Atrial activity extraction for atrial fibrillation analysis using blind source separation

This contribution addresses the extraction of atrial activity (AA) from real electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings of atrial fibrillation (AF). We show the appropriateness of independent component analysis (ICA) to tackle this biomedical challenge when regarded as a blind source separation (BSS) problem. ICA is a statistical tool able to reconstruct the unobservable independent sources of bioelectric activity which generate, through instantaneous linear mixing, a measurable set of signals. The three key hypothesis that make ICA applicable in the present scenario are discussed and validated: 1) AA and ventricular activity (VA) are generated by sources of independent bioelectric activity; 2) AA and VA present non-Gaussian distributions; and 3) the generation of the surface ECG potentials from the cardioelectric sources can be regarded as a narrow-band linear propagation process. To empirically endorse these claims, an ICA algorithm is applied to recordings from seven patients with persistent AF. We demonstrate that the AA source can be identified using a kurtosis-based reordering of the separated signals followed by spectral analysis of the sub-Gaussian sources. In contrast to traditional methods, the proposed BSS-based approach is able to obtain a unified AA signal by exploiting the atrial information present in every ECG lead, which results in an increased robustness with respect to electrode selection and placement.     

多维盲信源分离的联合块对角化方法

根据多维盲信源分离中源信号组内相关、组间独立的特点,提出一种利用联合块对角化解决该问题的方法,并用经过改造的雅克比算法实现。源信号自相关矩阵具有块对角结构,使得白化后观测数据的时延相关矩阵具有可联合块对角化的结构,因此可以通过联合块对角化来辨识分离矩阵中的正交部分以恢复源信号。针对联合块对角化的特点,对传统的雅克比方法加以改造,将GIVENS旋转矩阵中参数的选择问题转化为一元四次三角函数多项式的优化问题,同时调整旋转的循环顺序。这样,通过连续的GIVENS旋转即可实现联合块对角化。实验仿真和分析表明了算法的有效性。      

Compound noise separation in digital circuits using blind source separation

Analysis of individual noise sources in pre-nanometer circuits cannot take into account the evolving reality of multiple noise sources interacting with each other. Noise measurement made at an evaluation node will reflect the cumulative effect of all the active noise sources, while individual and relative severity of various noise sources will determine what types of remedial steps can be taken, pressing the need for development of algorithms that can analyze the contributions of different noise sources when a noise measurement is available. This paper addresses the cocktail-party problem inside integrated circuits with multiple noise sources. It presents a method to extract the time characteristics of individual noise source from the measured compound voltage in order to study the contribution and properties of each source. This extraction is facilitated by application of blind source separation technique, which is based on the assumption of statistical independence of various noise sources over time. The estimated noise sources can aid in performing timing and spectral analysis, and yield better circuit design techniques.     

A blind source separation technique using second-order statistics

Separation of sources consists of recovering a set of signals of which only instantaneous linear mixtures are observed. In many situations, no a priori information on the mixing matrix is available: The linear mixture should be “blindly” processed. This typically occurs in narrowband array processing applications when the array manifold is unknown or distorted. This paper introduces a new source separation technique exploiting the time coherence of the source signals. In contrast with other previously reported techniques, the proposed approach relies only on stationary second-order statistics that are based on a joint diagonalization of a set of covariance matrices. Asymptotic performance analysis of this method is carried out; some numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method     

Nonlinear blind source separation using a hybrid RBF-FMLP network

A novel scheme for blind source separation of nonlinearly mixed signals is developed using a hybrid system based on radial basis function (RBF) and feedforward multilayer perceptron (FMLP) networks. In this paper, the development of the proposed RBF-FMLP network is discussed, which hinges on the theory of nonlinear regularisation. The proposed network uses simultaneously local and global mapping bases to perform both signal separation and reconstruction of continuous signals in addition to signals that exhibit a high degree of fluctuation. The parameters of the proposed system are estimated jointly using the generalised gradient descent approach thereby rendering the training process relatively simple and efficient in computation. Simulations of both synthetic and speech signals have been undertaken to verify the efficacy of the proposed scheme in terms of speed, accuracy and robustness against noise.     

Superefficiency in blind source separation

Blind source separation is the problem of extracting independent signals from their mixtures without knowing the mixing coefficients nor the probability distributions of source signals and may be applied to EEG and MEG imaging of the brain. It is already known that certain algorithms work well for the extraction of independent components. The present paper is concerned with superefficiency of these based on the statistical and dynamical analysis. In a statistical estimation using t examples, the covariance of any two extracted independent signals converges to 0 of the order of 1/t. On-line dynamics shows that the covariance is of the order of η when the learning rate η is fixed to a small constant. In contrast with the above general properties, a surprising superefficiency holds in blind source separation under certain conditions where superefficiency implies that covariance decreases in the order of 1/t² or of η² . The paper uses the natural gradient learning algorithm and method of estimating functions to obtain superefficient procedures for both batch estimation and on-line learning. A standardized estimating function is introduced to this end. Superefficiency does not imply that the error variances of the extracted signals decrease in the order of 1/t² or η² but implies that their covariances (and independencies) do     

Low-complexity single-channel blind source separation

For the time-frequency overlapped signals, a low-complexity single-channel blind source separation (SBSS) algorithm is proposed in this paper. The algorithm does not only introduce the Gibbs sampling theory to separate the mixed signals, but also adopts the orthogonal triangle decomposition-M (QRD-M) to reduce the computational complexity. According to analysis and simulation results, we demonstrate that the separation performance of the proposed algorithm is similar to that of the per-survivor processing (PSP) algorithm, while its computational complexity is sharply reduced.     

New criteria for blind source separation using second-order cyclic statistics

This paper addresses the problem of blind separation of cyclostationary sources. By using the cyclostationarity property of the source signals, new criteria based on second-order cyclic statistics (SOCS) are established, from which two algorithms for blind source separation are proposed. Compared with the existing higher-order statistics-based approaches, our new approach requires few data samples and does not impose any restrictions on the probability distributions of the source signals. Simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new approach.     

General approach to blind source separation

This paper identifies and studies two major issues in the blind source separation problem: separability and separation principles. We show that separability is an intrinsic property of the measured signals and can be described by the concept of m-row decomposability introduced in this paper; we also show that separation principles can be developed by using the structure characterization theory of random variables. In particular, we show that these principles can be derived concisely and intuitively by applying the Darmois-Skitovich theorem, which is well known in statistical inference theory and psychology. Some new insights are gained for designing blind source separation filters     

Concurrent speakers localization using blind source separation and microphone array geometry

Multidimensional Systems and Signal Processing - Speaker localization has been an active topic of research due to its wide range of applications in multimedia and communication technologies. While...     

基于时间结构盲源分离算法的工频干扰消除

研究了基于时间结构盲源分离算法的基本原理,在分析其特点和适用范围的基础上,提出了采用时间结构盲源分离算法消除地震信号采集过程中工频干扰的方法,并与基于FastICA的方法进行了性能比较.研究结果表明,本方法能够有效地消除地震信号中的工频干扰,同时保护有用信号,且干扰消除性能具有明显优势.     

Spatiotemporal blind source separation approach to atrial activity estimation in atrial tachyarrhythmias

The analysis and characterization of atrial tachyarrhythmias requires, in a previous step, the extraction of the atrial activity (AA) free from ventricular activity and other artefacts. This contribution adopts the blind source separation (BSS) approach to AA estimation from multilead electrocardiograms (ECGs). Previously proposed BSS methods for AA extraction-e.g., independent component analysis (ICA)-exploit only the spatial diversity introduced by the multiple spatially-separated electrodes. However, AA typically shows certain degree of temporal correlation, with a narrowband spectrum featuring a main frequency peak around 3.5-9 Hz. Taking advantage of this observation, we put forward a novel two-step BSS-based technique which exploits both spatial and temporal information contained in the recorded ECG signals. The spatiotemporal BSS algorithm is validated on simulated and real ECGs from a significant number of atrial fibrillation (AF) and atrial flutter (AFL) episodes, and proves consistently superior to a spatial-only ICA method. In simulated ECGs, a new methodology for the synthetic generation of realistic AF episodes is proposed, which includes a judicious comparison between the known AA content and the estimated AA sources. Using this methodology, the ICA technique obtains correlation indexes of 0.751, whereas the proposed approach obtains a correlation of 0.830 and an error in the estimated signal reduced by a factor of 40%. In real ECG recordings, we propose to measure performance by the spectral concentration (SC) around the main frequency peak. The spatiotemporal algorithm outperforms the ICA method, obtaining a SC of 58.8% and 44.7%, respectively.     

回溯式在线EASI盲源分离算法

针对现有的在线盲源分离算法在时变混合矩阵突变后初始阶段分离精度低的问题,提出一种改进的在线盲分离算法。该算法通过检测误差函数的变化来确定时变混合矩阵的突变点,并利用突变前收敛较好的分离矩阵对之前的观测数据进行回溯分离。仿真结果表明,对于具有间歇式突变的时变混合环境的场景,相较于传统在线盲分离算法,提出的回溯式在线EASI盲源分离算法能提高分离初始阶段的分离精度,有效地跟踪混合矩阵的突变。      

Uncorrelated component analysis for blind source separation

The uncorrelated component analysis (UCA) of a stationary random vector process consists of searching for a linear transformation that minimizes the temporal correlation between its components. Through a general analysis we show that under practically reasonable and mild conditions UCA is a solution for blind source separation. The theorems proposed in this paper for UCA provide useful insights for developing practical algorithms. UCA explores the temporal information of the signals, whereas independent component analysis (ICA) explores the spatial information; thus UCA can be applied for source separation in some cases where ICA cannot. For blind source separation, combining ICA and UCA may give improved performance because more information can be utilized. The concept of single UCA (SUCA) is also proposed, which leads to sequential source separation.This work was supported in part by grants from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, grants HKU553/96M, HKU7036/97E, and HKUST776/96E.     

An iterative method using conditional second-order statistics applied to the blind source separation problem

This paper is concerned with the problem of blind separation of an instantaneous mixture of sources (BSS), which has been addressed in many ways. When power spectral densities of the sources are different, methods using second-order statistics are sufficient to solve this problem. Otherwise, these methods fail and others (higher order statistics, etc.) must be used. In this paper, we propose an iterative method to process the case of sources with the same power spectral density. This method is based on an evaluation of conditional first and second-order statistics only. Restrictions on characteristics of sources are given to reach a solution, and proofs of convergence of the algorithm are provided for particular cases of probability density functions. Robustness of this algorithm with respect to the number of sources is shown through computer simulations. A particular case of sources that have a probability density function with unbounded domain of definition is described; here, the algorithm does not lead directly to a separation state but to an a priori known mixture state. Finally, prospects of links with contrast functions are mentioned, with a possible generalization of them based on results obtained with particular sources.     

Underdetermined blind source separation of temporomandibular joint sounds

The underdetermined blind source separation problem using a filtering approach is addressed. An extension of the FastICA algorithm is devised which exploits the disparity in the kurtoses of the underlying sources to estimate the mixing matrix and thereafter achieves source recovery by employing the ll-norm algorithm. Besides, we demonstrate how promising FastICA can be to extract the sources. Furthermore, we illustrate how this scenario is particularly appropriate for the separation of temporomandibular joint (TMJ) sounds.     

超定盲信号分离的半参数统计方法

研究观测信号的数目m不小于源信号的数目n情况下盲信号分离问题.首先证明若混合矩阵满列秩,则在本质相等意义下,存在唯一的m×m非奇异矩阵使得分离系统的输出除零信号外,其它非零信号即是希望提取的源信号.基于此,采用半参数统计方法构造超定盲信号分离的估计函数,给出相应的学习算法;理论证明了该算法具有等变化性和分离矩阵的非奇异特性,并借助于源信号数目未知且动态变化的计算机仿真验证了其有效性.     

Fetal electrocardiogram extraction by blind source subspace separation

In this paper, we propose the emerging technique of independent component analysis, also known as blind source separation, as an interesting tool for the extraction of the antepartum fetal electrocardiogram from multilead cutaneous potential recordings. The technique is illustrated by means of a real-life example.     

自适应变步长的动量项盲源分离方法

针对传统盲源分离算法采用单一步长而无法同时兼顾收敛速度与稳态性以及动量因子选取的问题,介绍了一种盲源分离优化方法。该方法依据自然梯度算法(Natural Gradient Algorithm,NGA)的收敛条件,通过输出信号建立一种新的表示信号分离程度的度量指标,通过此度量指标构造非线性单调函数,使步长与动量因子参数自适应调节,从而可以合理、准确地选择参数。仿真表明了在平稳和非平稳环境下所提分离指标的正确性,且该指标可有效监测信号分离程度;针对步长及动量因子参数选取所设计的优化策略能够有效地缓解固定值对算法性能的约束,在有无噪声的情况下,均获得了优良的分离效果。