False Alarm Reduction in Self-Care by Personalized Automatic Detection of ECG Electrode Cable Interchanges

Introduction. False alarm reduction is an important challenge in self-care, whereas one of the most important false alarm causes in the cardiology domain is electrodes misplacements in ECG recordings, the main investigations to perform for early and pervasive detection of cardiovascular diseases. In this context, we present and assess a new method for electrode reversals identification for Mason-Likar based 3D ECG recording systems which are especially convenient to use in self-care and allow to achieve, as previously reported, high computerized ischemia detection accuracy. Methods. We mathematically simulate the effect of the six pairwise reversals of the LA, RA, LL, and C2 electrodes on the three ECG leads I, II, and V2. Our approach then consists in performing serial comparisons of the newly recorded 3D ECG and of the six derived ECGs simulating an electrode reversal with a standard, 12-lead reference ECG by means of the CAVIAR software. We further use a scoring method to compare these analysis results and then apply a decision tree model to extract the most relevant measurements in a learning set of 121 patients recorded in ICU. Results. The comparison of the seven sets of serial analysis results from the learning set resulted in the determination of a composite criteria involving four measurements of spatial orientation changes of QRS and T and providing a reversal identification accuracy of 100%. Almost the same results, with 99.99% of sensitivity and 100% of specificity, were obtained in two test sets from 90 patients, composed of 2098 and 2036 representative ECG beats respectively recorded during PTCA balloon inflation, a procedure which mimics ischemia, and before PTCA for control. Conclusion. Personalized automatic detection of ECG electrode cable interchanges can reach almost the maximal accuracy of 100% in self-care, and can be performed in almost real time.