Power modulation spectrum - a promising approach for the indispensable quality control of electrocardiogram signals from monitoring units for the detection of autonomic dysfunction.

The percentage of ECG signals in the recordings based on the modulation spectrum correlates with expert rating (r = 0.99, p < 0.001). The AUC for PDQI for the detection of extrasystoles is 0.96, and the AUC for MSQI for the detection of artefacts is 0.83. The optimal thresholds for PDQI and MSQI are 0.44 and 0.17, respectively CONCLUSION: The power modulation spectrum can be applied to large amounts of data to detect ECG signals within biosignals and calculate quality indices. MSQI can be used for artefact detection and PDQI for extrasystole detection in ECG signals. A combined approach using both quality indices can provide a picture of the underlying data quality.