Fragmented ventricular depolarization detectable in the QRS complex of the magnetocardiogram after filtering with binomial non-recursive filters

High frequency components of the cardiac depolarization are considered important indicators of risk for sudden death due to VT/VF applied a non-recursive binomial high pass filter of the 90th order with a cutoff frequency at 37 Hz in order to search for high frequency components throughout the myocardial depolarization of signal averaged high resolution magnetocardiograms. Numerical quantification of the fragmentation resulted in a score with score values in a control group at (means SDD) 19/spl plusmn/5, in a post MI group at 27/spl plusmn/12 and in MI patients with VT at 42/spl plusmn/15. Sensitivity for VT was 0.91 and specificity 0.86. Thus fragmented activity could be detected not only in the terminal part of the depolarization.<>