Identification of the slow wave of bowel myoelectrical surface recording by empirical mode decomposition.

Surface electroenterogram (EEnG) is a non-invasive method to study bowel myoelectrical activity. Nevertheless, surface recorded EEnG is contaminated by respiratory, motion artifacts, and other interferences. The goal of this paper is to remove the respiration artifact and ultra-low frequency components from surface EEnG by means of empirical mode decomposition (EMD).

Signal noise ratio of small intestine myoelectrical signal recorded from external surface.

Electroenterogram (EEnG), which is the myoelectrical activity of the small bowel, can be non-invasively recorded from abdominal external surface. However, this bioelectrical signal is weak and noisy compared to internal recording from bowel serous layers, because of bioelectric transmission through abdominal layers. Furthermore, it is contaminated with several interferences from other biological activities as cardiac muscle (ECG), skeletal muscles (EMG), or respiration movements.