A New Automatic QT-Interval Measurement Method for Wireless ECG Monitoring System Using Smartphone

Abstract

QT-interval prolongation is an important parameter for heart arrhythmia diagnosis. It is the time interval from QRS-onset to the T-end of electrocardiogram (ECG). Manual measurement of QT-interval, especially for 12-leads ECG, is time-consuming. Hence, an automatic QT-interval measurement is necessary. A new method for automatic QT-interval measurement is presented in this paper, which mainly consists of three parts, including QRS-complex detection, determination of QRS-onset, and T-end determination. The QRS-complex detection is based on the modified Pan-Tompkins algorithm. The T-end is defined based on Region of Interest (ROI) maximum limit. We compare and test our proposed QT-interval measurement method with reference measurement in term of correlation coefficient and range of 95% LoA. The correlation coefficient and the range of 95% LoA are 0.575 and 0.290, respectively. The proposed method is successfully implemented in ECG monitoring system using smartphone with high performance. The accuracy, positive predictive, and sensitivity of the QRS-complex detection in the system are 99.70%, 99.78%, and 99.92%, respectively. The range of 95% LoA for the comparison between manual and the system's QT-interval measurement is 0.216. The results show that the proposed method is dependable on the measure of the QT-interval and outperforms the other methods in term of correlation coefficient and range of 95% LoA.