Identification of Cardiac Ischemia Using Spectral Domain Analysis of Electrocardiogram

Abstract

India has highest incidence of heart related diseases in the world. If no initiative is taken to check the disease the most predictable and preventable among all chronic diseases, India will have 62 million heart patients by 2015. Myocardial ischemia (also known as angina) is a heart condition caused by a temporary lack of oxygen-rich blood to the heart. Cardiac ischemia (CI) is a heart disease that covers heart issues caused by narrowing of the arteries which makes less oxygenated blood to reach the heart muscle. This may lead to heart attack with no prior warning. This paper introduces the work that has been done to distinguish the Electrocardiogram (ECG) of a normal healthy human from that of an ischemia patient. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) on ECG Signal was used to extract information and providing the basis with which a signal suggesting predisposition of the patient who suffers from Cardiac ischemia. The main aim is to design algorithm that enable the doctors to diagnose cardiac ischemia on the basis of spectral analysis of an ECG signal. 4 min. of ECG of any patient is enough to detect possibility of ischemia. Normal Sinus Rhythm Data is obtained from MIT-BIH NSR Database. Ischemia data is obtained from European ST-T Database. The data is taken for duration of 1 hour. The algorithm was tested on MIT-BIH database and European ST-T Database and the verification of results using MATLAB is done. This concept can be utilized to analyze ECG signals to identify other heart diseases.