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Biomedical Signal Processing pp 203–224Cite as

Unipolar Cardiac Leads Between History and Science

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Part of the book series: Series in BioEngineering ((SERBIOENG))

Abstract

The surface electrocardiography (ECG) uses a virtual reference point to measure the potential of chest electrodes. This reference potential is known as Wilson central terminal (WCT) and is assumed negligible (near zero) in amplitude. Consequently, the precordial leads have been named as the unipolar leads. Although this assumption was found incorrect immediate after this reference potential was introduced, it was difficult to measure its real amplitude. We recently introduced a 15-lead electrocardiography device that can record the traditional ECG leads in combination with the raw potential of limbs and chest electrodes directly referred to the circuit grounding. Consequently, we are able to record the potential of the raw chest electrodes, which we named as true unipolar chest leads. The aim of this study is to have a clear understanding of the WCT potential and its influence on the chest leads. Our records show that the true unipolar leads may be more sensitive for detecting cardiac diseases in the left anterior descending coronary artery in patients with non-ST elevation reported on chest leads.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Our dataset name is WCTECGdb, and was published in the Physionet website (https://alpha.physionet.org/content/wctecgdb/).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

    Hossein Moeinzadeh, Jonathan C. Tapson & Gaetano D. Gargiulo

  2. Department of Cardiology, Liverpool Hospital, Liverpool, NSW, Australia

    Joseph Assad

  3. Department of Biomedical Engineering, “Federico II” The University of Naples, Naples, Italy

    Paolo Bifulco & Mario Cesarelli

  4. School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Alistair L. McEwan

  5. School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown, NSW, Australia

    Aiden O’Loughlin

  6. Cardiology Department, Campbelltown Hospital, Campbelltown, NSW, Australia

    Ibrahim M. Shugman

  7. School of Medicine, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Aravinda Thiagalingam

  8. Cardiology Department, Westmead Hospital, Westmead, NSW, Australia

    Aravinda Thiagalingam

  9. Westmead Institute for Medical Research, Westmead, NSW, Australia

    Aravinda Thiagalingam

  10. School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Penrith, Australia

    Gaetano D. Gargiulo

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  1. Hossein Moeinzadeh
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Correspondence to Hossein Moeinzadeh .

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  1. MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Ganesh Naik

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Moeinzadeh, H. et al. (2020). Unipolar Cardiac Leads Between History and Science. In: Naik, G. (eds) Biomedical Signal Processing. Series in BioEngineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9097-5_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9097-5_10

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