A new method for early detection of myocardial ischemia: cardiodynamicsgram (CDG)

Abstract

Early detection of myocardial ischemia via electrocardiographic methods is important and challenging. In the study, based on the standard 12-lead electrocardiography (ECG), a new method called cardiodynamicsgram (CDG) is proposed for early detection of myocardial ischemia. Using a recently proposed deterministic learning algorithm, the cardiodynamics information is extracted from the ST-T segments of standard 12-lead ECG. The CDG is generated by plotting the three-dimensional cardiodynamics information. By analyzing CDG morphology, it is found that significant correlations exist between CDG and ischemia. By evaluating ischemia patients and healthy controls from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) database and the General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command, the CDG method achieves a mean sensitivity of 90.3% and a mean specificity of 87.8%, which are higher than those of both the standard 12-lead ECG and the exercise ECG. As it is noninvasive, convenient, and inexpensive, it is hopeful that CDG may become a cost-effective screening method for early detection of ischemic heart diseases.