A method for the determination of ECG gate signal delays

A simple device using a rotating radioactive source was developed to monitor the presence of a delay between the patient's R wave and the gate signal being sent to the computer. Three commercial ECG gates were tested and significant delays were found in two of them. Identical patient data evaluated using ECG gates with and without significant delays produced calculated left-ventricular ejection fractions of 0.05 and 0.64, respectively.