Improving ischemia diagnosis with synthesized ECG leads

The aim of this study is to improve the diagnosis of ischemic heart diseases by developing new synthesized leads. The synthesized leads were constructed in a learning population (60 CAD and 60 low prevalence of heart disease patients) with mathematical optimization. The optimized parameter was the T value of the Student´s t test. Three synthesized leads were constructed as a combination of the three (I, II, V2), five (I, II, V2, V5, V6) and eight (I, II and VI-V6) leads. In the control population (100 CAD and 100 non-CAD) the synthesized leads had 80.3%, 79.7% and 78.1% ROC-areas using three, five and eight leads, respectively. ROC-areas of the standard leads ranged from 52.8% (lead III) to 80.9% (lead I). The results of this study indicated that the detection of the ischemia using exercise ECG can be improved by developing the synthesized leads. Additionally, the developed method would give opportunity to more effective localization of the ischemia. The usefulness of the method and the synthesized leads need further studies.