Session S74.2

An Open-Source Standard T-Wave Alternans Detector for Benchmarking

A Khaustov*, GD Clifford

Institute of Cardiological Technics
St. Petersburg, Russia

We describe an open source algorithm suite for T-Wave Alternans (TWA) detection and quantification. The software consists of Matlab implementations of the widely used Spectral Method and Modified Moving Average with libraries to read both WFDB and ASCII data under windows and Linux. The software suite can run in both batch mode and with a provided graphical user interface to aid waveform exploration. Our software suite was calibrated using an open source TWA model, described in a partner paper "An artificial multi-channel model for generating abnormal electrocardiographic rhythms" by Clifford and Sameni. For the PhysioNet/CinC Challenge 2008 ("Detecting and Quantifying TWA"), we obtained a preliminary score of 0.615. However, our objective was not to provide the best TWA detector, but rather a benchmarking method by which others may quantify the performance of their algorithm. We also describe additions to the open source algorithms, including pre-filtering algorithms and the addition of spectral analysis for unevenly sampled data using the Lomb-Scargle periodogram (LSP). The LSP provides a robust facility to ignore noisy data and missing beats that are discarded using associated noise metrics.

(Abstract Control Number: 381)