Bi-dimensional cross-correlation of spectro-temporal maps for the detection of beat-to-beat variable late potentials

The aim of this paper is to detect the presence of beat-to-beat variable late potentials (LP) in high resolution ECG (HRECG) records. In order to evaluate the LP activity, we use the bi-dimensional cross-correlation between a template spectro-temporal map (STM) of LP and the STM of each individual beat of the HRECG record The method was applied to simulated HRECG records with different types of LP: a) Stable LP, b) Alternating LP, and c) LP of beat-to-beat variable amplitude. The simulated records were constructed using beats extracted from real HRECG records and were contaminated with white noise of different RMS levels. Our results show that the proposed method is able to detect a high percentage of stable LP and beat-to-beat variable LP, still in presence of high noise levels. We conclude that the method is a promising technique for the detection of beat-to-beat LP activity in HRECG records.