Introduction: Electrode misplacement and interchange errors are known problems when recording the 12‑lead electrocardiogram (ECG). Automatic detection of these errors could play an important role for improving clinical decision making and outcomes in cardiac care. The objectives of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to
1) study the impact of electrode misplacement on ECG signals and ECG interpretation,
2) to determine the most challenging electrode misplacements to detect using machine learning (ML),
3) to analyse the ML performance of algorithms that detect electrode misplacement or interchange according to sensitivity and specificity and
4) to identify the most commonly used ML technique for detecting electrode misplacement/interchange. This review analysed the current literature regarding electrode misplacement/interchange recognition accuracy using machine learning techniques.
Method: A search of three online databases including IEEE, PubMed and ScienceDirect identified 228 articles, while 3 articles were included from additional sources from co-authors. According to the eligibility criteria, 14 articles were selected. The selected articles were considered for qualitative analysis and meta-analysis.
Results: The articles showed the effect of lead interchange on ECG morphology and as a consequence on patient diagnoses. Statistical analysis of the included articles found that machine learning performance is high in detecting electrode misplacement/interchange except left arm/left leg interchange.
Conclusion: This review emphasises the importance of detecting electrode misplacement detection in ECG diagnosis and the effects on decision making. Machine learning shows promise in detecting lead misplacement/interchange and highlights an opportunity for developing and operationalising deep learning algorithms such as
convolutional neural network (CNN) to detect electrode misplacement/interchange.
Background: We have previously reported on the potential of patch-based ECG leads to observe changes typical during ischaemia. In this study we aim to assess the utility of patch-based leads in the detection of these changes.
Method: Body surface potential maps (BSPM) from subjects (n=45) undergoing elective percutaneous coronary angioplasty (PTCA) were used. The short spaced lead (SSL), that was previously identified as having the greatest ST-segment change between baseline and peak balloon inflation (PBI), was selected as the basis for a patch based lead system. A feature set of J-point amplitudes for all bipolar leads available within the same 100 mm region were included (n=6). Current 12-lead ECG criteria were applied to 12-lead ECGs for the same subjects to benchmark performance.
Results: The previously identified single SSL achieved sensitivity and specificity of 87% and 71% respectively using a Naive Bayes classifier. Adding other combinations of leads to this did not improve performance significantly. The 12-lead ECG performance was 62/93% (sensitivity/specificity).
Conclusion: This study suggests that short spaced leads can be sensitive to ischaemic ECG changes. However, due to the short distance between leads, they lack the specificity of the 12-lead ECG.