Advanced ECG in 2016: is there more than just a tracing?

The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is the most frequently used technology in clinical cardiology. It is critical for evidence-based management of patients with most cardiovascular conditions, including patients with acute myocardial infarction, suspected chronic cardiac ischaemia, cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure and implantable cardiac devices. In contrast to many other techniques in cardiology, the ECG is simple, small, mobile, universally available and cheap, and therefore particularly attractive. Standard ECG interpretation mainly relies on direct visual assessment. The progress in biomedical computing and signal processing, and the available computational power offer fascinating new options for ECG analysis relevant to all fields of cardiology. Several digital ECG markers and advanced ECG technologies have shown promise in preliminary studies. This article reviews promising novel surface ECG technologies in three different fields. (1) For the detection of myocardial ischaemia and infarction, QRS morphology feature analysis, the analysis of high frequency QRS components (HF-QRS) and methods using vectorcardiography as well as ECG imaging are discussed. (2) For the identification and management of patients with cardiac arrhythmias, methods of advanced P-wave analysis are discussed and the concept of ECG imaging for noninvasive localisation of cardiac arrhythmias is presented. (3) For risk stratification of sudden cardiac death and the selection of patients for medical device therapy, several novel markers including an automated QRS-score for scar quantification, the QRS-T angle or the T-wave peak-to-end-interval are discussed. Despite the existing preliminary data, none of the advanced ECG markers and technologies has yet accomplished the transition into clinical practice. Further refinement of these technologies and broader validation in large unselected patient cohorts are the critical next step needed to facilitate translation of advanced ECG technologies into clinical cardiology.