An ECG lead system for reducing artifacts in the temporal averaging of cardiac signals

Temporal averaging requires a trigger which is time-locked to the signals to be processed. For reducing the trigger jitter a special electrocardiogram (ECG) lead system was developed. The method is based on a surface integration of the potentials over the thorax. In the case of QRS-detection the standard deviation of a trigger can be diminished by 4 ms at rest and 14 ms during exercise. The bandwidth of the equivalent low-pass filter was therefore extended by 160 Hz and 190 Hz, respectively. The results suggest that the use of single ECG leads is unsuitable for optimal averaging of cardiac signals to analyze high-frequency components in the ECG