Evaluation of arrhythmogenic substrate in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy using wavelet transform analysis

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is thought to have a microvolt-level electrical disarrangement in the myocardium that leads to ventricular tachyarrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. Although signal-averaged electrocardiography (ECG) has been used to detect late potential as a parameter of electrical instability, its predictability is not high. The focus of the present study was the ability of high-resolution wavelet transform from beat-to-beat analysis to detect arrhythmogenic substrates and to evaluate its relationship to the severity of ventricular tachycardia.

The study group comprised 50 healthy subjects and 50 patients with HCM. The filtered-QRS duration from the signal-averaged ECG, the high-power duration (HPD) and number of disarrangement points (NDP) from the wavelet-transform ECG were measured. When HPD was defined >114 ms and/or NDP >9 points as abnormal, the sensitivity and specificity for ventricular tachycardia was 93.8% and 79.4%, respectively. When a mean +/- standard deviation of the HPD in normal subjects was defined as normal, 93.8% of patients with a positive late potential were out of the normal range.

The newly developed color-display 3-dimensional wavelet transform system showed good time-frequency resolution in analyzing every single beat without signal-averaging. The analysis could be used to detect arrhythmogenic substrates in patients with HCM.