Adaptation of the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram system dedicated to the analysis of atrial fibrillation.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of the study was to design a lead system aimed at studying atrial fibrillation (AF), while being anchored to the standard 12-lead system.


METHODS
The location of 4 of the 6 precordial electrodes was optimized while leaving the remaining 5 of the 9 electrodes of the standard 12-lead system in place. The analysis was based on episodes of 11 different variants of AF simulated by a biophysical model of the atria positioned inside an inhomogeneous thorax. The optimization criterion used was derived from the singular value decomposition of the data matrices.


RESULTS
While maintaining VR, VL, VF, V1 and V4, the 4 new electrode positions increased the ratio of the eighth and the first singular values of the data matrices of the new configuration about 5-fold compared with that of the conventional electrode positions.


CONCLUSIONS
The adapted lead system produces a more complete view on AF compared with that of the standard 12-lead system.
Ihara
Zenichi
Z
Signal Processing Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland. zenichi.ihara@epfl.ch
van Oosterom
Adriaan
A
Jacquemet
Vincent
V
Hoekema
Rudi
R
D001281:Atrial Fibrillation / Q000175:diagnosis*; D018780:Body Surface Potential Mapping / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D004566:Electrodes; D006325:Heart Atria / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006329:Heart Conduction System / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008955:Models, Cardiovascular; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity