Abstract
A high-resolution (HR) surface ECG system is described, suitable for HR real-time (RT) recording and for signal averaging (SA). HR-ECG measurements were done in an electrically shielded room. The signal was amplified with a battery-driven 8-channel preamplifier, digitized with a 12(16)-bit A/D converter and stored in a microcomputer. The overall noise level of the system was below 1 µ Vp-p in the band 0.05–300 Hz. RT- and SA-magnetocardiographic (MCG) measurements were done in a magnetically shielded room using a very sensitive (5 fT/√VHz) DC-SQUID magnetic gradiometer. The output signal was transferred to a minicomputer for analysis. Examples of ECG and MCG recordings of cardiac micropotentials are presented, using both RT- and SA-techniques with special reference to late potentials (LP). The MCG technique was also utilized for localizing the Kent bundle in 6 cases of WPW syndrome. The recovery rate of LP was 37% in patients with recent myocardial infarction (AMI), and 72% in patients with ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF). The mean duration of LP in the VT/VF-group was 27 ms, and the mean amplitude 17 µV. The His-Purkinje signal was detected in 60% of cases examined. The RT-ECG proved to be superior to the SA-ECG in detecting intermittent or inconstantly timed signals. Preliminary base-line data of 2 prospective studies are presented (10 patients of which with VT, 10 with recent AMI without VT and 10 healthy controls) using both RT-ECG and SA-ECG, the latter with both time and frequency domain analysis. The initial and terminal QRS notches of the low-gain ECG were most frequent in the VT group, and probably belong to the same category of depolarization abnormalities as LPs.
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Siltanen, P. et al. (1989). High resolution electrocardiography and magnetocardiography: clinical application. In: Hombach, V., Hilger, H.H., Kennedy, H.L. (eds) Electrocardiography and Cardiac Drug Therapy. Developments in Cardiovascular Medicine, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1081-2_20
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