Comparative Evaluation of Methodologies for T-Wave Alternans Mapping in Electrograms

Michele Orini, Ben Hanson, Violeta Monasterio, Juan Pablo Martinez, Martin Hayward, Peter Taggart, Pier Lambiase
2014 IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering  
Electrograms (EGM) recorded from the surface of the myocardium are becoming more and more accessible. T-wave alternans (TWA) is associated with increased vulnerability to ventricular tachycardia/fibrillation and it occurs before the onset of ventricular arrhythmias. Thus, accurate methodologies for time-varying alternans estimation/detection in EGM are needed. In this paper, we perform a simulation study based on epicardial EGM recorded in vivo in humans to compare the accuracy of four
more » ... gies: the spectral method (SM), modified moving average method, laplacian likelihood ratio method (LLR), and a novel method based on time-frequency distributions. A variety of effects are considered, which include the presence of wide band noise, respiration, and impulse artifacts. We found that 1) EGM-TWA can be detected accurately when the standard deviation of wide-band noise is equal or smaller than ten times the magnitude of EGM-TWA. 2) Respiration can be critical for EGM-TWA analysis, even at typical respiratory rates. 3) Impulse noise strongly reduces the accuracy of all methods, except LLR. 4) If depolarization time is used as a fiducial point, the localization of the T-wave is not critical for the accuracy of EGM-TWA detection. 5) According to this study, all methodologies provided accurate EGM-TWA detection/quantification in ideal conditions, while LLR was the most robust, providing better detection-rates in noisy conditions. Application on epicardial mapping of the in vivo human heart shows that EGM-TWA has heterogeneous spatio-temporal distribution.
doi:10.1109/tbme.2013.2289304 pmid:24235296 fatcat:xhp77mjpnbdkpourfqszypehs4