Amplitude Modulation Effects in Cardiac Signals

A subject's heart beat can be nearly invisible in a spectrum, when that spectrum is generated using conventional methods of Fourier analysis. The phenomenon has been observed in records of both electrocardiography type and seismocardiography type. The mechanisms of nonlinear physics responsible for these complexities involve the phenomenon of amplitude modulation. Fortunately, there is a simple remedy to prevent loss of valuable frequency domain information. Instead of operating on the raw signal, one simply rectifies that signal before performing the fast Fourier transform (FFT) calculation. Alternatively, nearly equivalent spectra can be obtained by operating on the signal with the Teager-Kaiser operator before doing the FFT.