Stress ECG signal analysis to detect evidence of ischemic preconditioning

Evidence of ischemic preconditioning in patients undergoing a stress test has been widely argued in previous studies based on conventional electrocardiographic parameters and measurements. The current study provides a methodology useful to clarify and support this evidence, based on time series analysis of stress ECG derived parameters and multivariate analysis. The methods were applied to a database composed of 9 CAD patients who underwent two consecutive stress tests within a 24-hour window. Preliminary results show that the parameters obtained from the stress ECG are adequate to assess the ischemic preconditioning phenomenon. Using Fisher discriminant analysis is possible to observe a marked difference between stress ECGs from the first and second tests, in average, and for each patient in particular. Also, further comparison was made with results from healthy patients, showing that the second test results form a cluster that is oriented towards the healthy group cluster