Non- invasive Localization of the Ectopic Foci of Focal Atrial Tachycardia by Using ECG Signal based Sparse Decomposition Algorithm (vol 70, 103014, 2021)

Over 95% of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) can be treated using the electrophysiology study (EPS) and catheter ablation procedure. As The lack of accurate tools to guide electrophysiologists to find the exact location of ectopic foci, the present study was to locate ectopic foci of focal-atrial tachycardia (FAT) via information extracted from simple and non-invasive electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. For this aim, 32 ECG signals were collected from Tehran arrhythmia clinic database, and then independent features were obtained through the independent component analysis (ICA). Subsequently, the location of arrhythmia in the right and left atria was established and classified by sparse decomposition algorithm upon developing a dictionary based on these independent features. This algorithm could represent a spatial-temporal pattern of the input in the form of a combined line of basic functions existing in the dictionary. Over the past few decades, it has been also widely utilized in image compression and restoration as well as source separation and classification. The study results demonstrated that the sparse decomposition algorithm was well able to locate arrhythmias in the right and left atria with a mean accuracy of 93.27 +/- 2.78. Since FAT generally emerges in certain anatomical locations, five areas in the right atrium and four areas in the left atrium, were determined as nine classifications in this respect. The accuracy of the results for different classifications was by 70.24% on average. Therefore, it was concluded that ECG signals could estimate the location ectopic foci before EPS in an accurate manner.