Fragmentation of bandpass-filtered QRS-complex of patients prone to malignant arrhythmia

The structure of high-frequency components of electric and magnetic signals from the heart during the depolarisation phase is investigated. After aver aging and broadband filtering with a binomial bandpass filter (37Hz-90Hz), the fragmentation of the QRS-complex is quantified. The number of extrema M and a new score value S are calculated from the signals of three electrica l leads and one magnetic lead of 23 healthy subjects, 23 patients with coro nary heart disease (CHD) without reported event of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation at the time of measurement, and eight patients with CHD who have suffered from malignant tachycardia. For the parameter M, the sensiti vity and specificity for healthy subjects against patients with CHD and ven tricular tachycardia for the magnetic lead (the best electric lead) are 100 % (75%) and 100% (100%). For the magnetic lead (best electric lead) and par ameter S, the sensitivity and specificity are 100% (75%) and 95.6% (100%).