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Is there a verb for removing the mean or DC component of a signal? I am trying to name a flag for doing just that.

"Normalize" can mean many things, so I don't think that would be a good choice.

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I've heard this referred to as demeaning a signal, or applying a DC notch (or, in some more hardware-related domains, a DC block). More generally, it might be called just highpass filtering the signal to remove the DC component.

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    $\begingroup$ That's a demeaning way to refer to it! ;-) $\endgroup$
    – Peter K.
    Apr 4, 2013 at 13:05
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I've heard the word centering for setting the mean of a signal to 0.

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I've heard this called detrending. Although DC removal is a subset of what this means, the Mathworks refers to it in their detrend function:

The MATLAB® function detrend subtracts the mean or a best-fit line 
(in the least-squares sense) from your data. If your data contains 
several data columns, detrend treats each data column separately.
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  • $\begingroup$ Peter, I don't believe removal of mean is 'de-trending'. As you of course know the mean simply removes the DC/constant component, however, the de-trending removes the uber low frequency components. (Yes I think MATLAB's usage of the verb is wrong. :-) ) $\endgroup$
    – Spacey
    Apr 4, 2013 at 14:29
  • $\begingroup$ @Mohammad: Agreed it's not quite right, but it is the way I've heard it used. $\endgroup$
    – Peter K.
    Apr 4, 2013 at 15:07
  • $\begingroup$ Peter, yeah, the terminology can get muddied up sometimes. $\endgroup$
    – Spacey
    Apr 4, 2013 at 16:01
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Another potential candidate:

"Zero-DC-ing the signal"

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A seldomly-used term is symmetrization, with accounts for removing a central tendency value (could be the average, the median, the midrange, depending on the loss function to minimize).

References:

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