Computer analysis of electrocardiographic bites-comparison with visual VCG measurements

A method to synthesize the vectorcardiogram (VCG) from the 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) was earlier presented by L. Edenbrandt et al. (1988). The authors also presented an automated method for detection and quantification of bites, i.e. abnormalities in the configuration of the planar loops. The purpose of the present study is to combine and test these two methods in order to introduce the concept of vectorcardiographic bites in computerized analysis of the 12-lead ECG. Bite amplitudes were studied in 296 patients with diabetes mellitus using the method for synthesizing VCGs from 12-lead ECGs and automated bite analysis. The differences between bite amplitudes measured automatically and visually were less than 35 μV in all but 3/149 cases. The differences in bite amplitude between Frank VCG and synthesized VCG were greater, but good agreement was seen in the majority of cases