In this paper, an improved algorithm for the extraction of respiration signal from the electrocardiogram (ECG) is proposed. The whole system consists of two-lead electrocardiogram acquisition (lead Ⅰ and Ⅱ), baseline fluctuation elimination, R-wave detection, adjustment of sudden change in R-wave area using moving average, and optimal lead selection. In order to solve the problem of previous algorithms for the ECG-derived respiration (EDR) signal acquisition, we proposed a method for the optimal lead selection. An optimal EDR signal among the three EDR signals derived from each lead (and arctangent of their ratio) is selected by estimating the instantaneous frequency using the Hilbert transform, and then choosing the signal with minimum variation of the instantaneous frequency. The proposed algorithm was tested on 15 subjects, and we could obtain satisfactory respiration signals that shows high correlation (r>0.9) with the signal acquired from the chest-belt respiration sensor.