Measurement and Evaluation of QT Interval Prolongation Based on Simulated Electrocardiogram Using Continuous Wavelet Transform

Abstract

AbstractThe measurement of QT interval prolongation is an important test for evaluating the proarrhythmic risk associated with drug interactions. Although algorithms for QT interval detection are well studied, there is no much attention on QT interval changes. On the other hand, for evaluation of QT interval measurement algorithms, pathological or experimental Electrocardiograms (ECGs) corresponding to QT changes are not usually available. In this study, we developed a continuous wavelet-based algorithm specially aimed at the measurement of QT interval prolongation. For evaluation, we conducted computer simulation based a whole-heart model to develop ECGs before and after QT interval prolongation, and used these data as gold standard to evaluate our algorithm. The simulated ECGs were artificially mixed with three types of noise under various signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of white Gaussian noise. Six cases with different compositions of these noises were used for the evaluation. For all of the six cases, the standard deviation of the measurement error tends to decrease as the SNR increases, and the average standard deviation of measurement errors were less than 1 ms.KeywordsContinuous Wavelet TransformationModulus MaximumInterval ProlongationProarrhythmic RiskContinuous Wavelet Transformation CoefficientThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.