Presence of T wave alternans in the statistical context - a new approach to low amplitude alternans measurement

Detection of T wave alternans is constructed as a statistical problem in the present work. The objective was to evaluate the performance of a group of statistical tests in detecting a set of artificially generated alternans episodes and in the European ST (EST) database. Three statistical tests, standard t-test, matched pair t-test, and Rayleigh test, were performed on numerically generated sequences and also on simulated alternans episodes in a rolling sequence of 32 beats. Application of statistical tests to the numerical simulations and beat simulations resulted in 100% detection accuracy. Statistical tests also detected multiple episodes of both visible and invisible alternans in the EST database. Statistical tests seem to provide a complementary and a computationally efficient solution to alternans detection problem in surface ECG.