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Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a challenging health problem in the western world. Analysis of cardiac repolarization from the electrocardiogram (ECG) provides valuable information for stratifying patients according to their risk of suffering from arrhythmic events that could end in SCD, as well as for assessing efficacy of antiarrhythmic therapies. In this paper, we start by exploring the cellular basis of ECG repolarization waveforms under both normal and pathological conditions. We then describe basic preprocessing steps that need to be accomplished on the ECG signal before extracting repolarization indices. A comprehensive review of techniques aimed to characterize spatial or temporal repolarization dispersion is provided, together with a summary of their usefulness for clinical risk stratification. Techniques that describe spatial dispersion of repolarization are based on either differences in repolarization duration or T-wave loop morphology. Techniques that evaluate temporal dispersion of repolarization include the analysis of QT interval adaptation to heart rate changes, QT interval and T-wave variability, and T-wave alternans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an ischemia detector is presented based on the analysis of QRS-derived angles. The detector has been developed by modeling ischemic effects on the QRS angles as a gradual change with a certain transition time and assuming a Laplacian additive modeling error contaminating the angle series. Both standard and non-standard leads were used for analysis. Non-standard leads were obtained by applying the PCA technique over specific lead subsets to represent different potential locations of the ischemic zone. The performance of the proposed detector was tested over a population of 79 patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention in one of the major coronary arteries (LAD (n  =  25), RCA (n  =  16) and LCX (n  =  38)). The best detection performance, obtained for standard ECG leads, was achieved in the LAD group with values of sensitivity and specificity of , , followed by the RCA group with , Sp  =  94.4 and the LCX group with , , notably outperforming detection based on the ST series in all cases, with the same detector structure. The timing of the detected ischemic events ranged from 30 s up to 150 s (mean  =  66.8 s) following the start of occlusion. We conclude that changes in the QRS angles can be used to detect acute myocardial ischemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]