The present disclosure relates to the field of electrocardiography. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a method of presenting ECG component data.
An electrocardiogram (ECG) is the primary physiological measurement used for assessing the cardiac health of a patient. The ECG measures the electrical impulses propagated through the heart in a regular pattern that results in the cyclical contraction and relaxation of the heart muscle.
This electrical propagation is measured by a plurality of electrodes placed upon the patient. Based upon the number of electrodes placed upon the patient, these electrical signals may be measured at a wide variety of vectors or leads projecting out of the patient's heart in very specified directions. The most common arrangements of ECG measure either six leads or twelve leads of cardiac data.
Typically, ECG leads are analyzed by breaking the ECG data into a variety of features indicative of the depolarization and repolarization of specific anatomical locations of the heart. There are two standard types of analysis that are performed with regards to these morphological features (P wave, QRS wave, ST segment, T wave, and U wave). The timing between features within a heart beat, or between the same features of successive heart beats may be analyzed. Alternatively, or additionally, the magnitude and shape (morphology) of each of these features may be analyzed.
One difficulty with the display and interpretation of ECG data is that as more leads of ECG data are added to the analysis, thus providing a more detailed analysis of patient cardiac condition, increasingly more data must be displayed. Therefore, it is desirable to develop new methods for the efficient presentation of ECG data, particularly ECG morphology data which is often less intuitive for a clinician to interpret than temporal or duration based ECG based analysis.