A MODIFIED CORRELATION METHOD FOR T-WAVE ALTERNANS DETECTION

Abstract

Identification of individuals who are at risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD) remains a formidable challenge. T-wave alternans (TWA) evaluation is emerging as an important tool for risk stratification in patients with heart diseases. Several methods have been developed in recent years to detect and quantify TWA. One such method is known as the correlation method (CM). This method performs well for different levels of TWA and phase shifts in the time domain, but it is sensitive to noise and requires higher quality of electrocardiogram (ECG) signal for test. In this paper, we propose a modified correlation method (MCM) to ensure a robust and accuracy detection of TWA. Compared with CM, MCM add a stage of T-wave curve fitting before media T-wave template, and the TWA magnitude is obtained by meaning the maximum absolute difference between even and odd T-wave. Our assessment study demonstrates the improved performance of the proposed algorithm.