Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7AL, United Kingdom.
Physiological Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3DY, United Kingdom.
Sci Rep. 2020 Apr 22;10(1):6822. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-63343-7.
Equine athletes have a pattern of exercise which is analogous to human athletes and the cardiovascular risks in both species are similar. Both species have a propensity for atrial fibrillation (AF), which is challenging to detect by ECG analysis when in paroxysmal form. We hypothesised that the proarrhythmic background present between fibrillation episodes in paroxysmal AF (PAF) might be detectable by complexity analysis of apparently normal sinus-rhythm ECGs. In this retrospective study ECG recordings were obtained during routine clinical work from 82 healthy horses and from 10 horses with a diagnosis of PAF. Artefact-free 60-second strips of normal sinus-rhythm ECGs were converted to binary strings using threshold crossing, beat detection and a novel feature detection parsing algorithm. Complexity of the resulting binary strings was calculated using Lempel-Ziv ('76 & '78) and Titchener complexity estimators. Dependence of Lempel-Ziv '76 and Titchener T-complexity on the heart rate in ECG strips obtained at low heart rates (25-60 bpm) and processed by the feature detection method was found to be significantly different in control animals and those diagnosed with PAF. This allows identification of horses with PAF from sinus-rhythm ECGs with high accuracy.
马类运动员的运动模式与人类运动员相似，两者的心血管风险也相似。这两个物种都容易发生心房颤动（AF），当阵发性时，心电图（ECG）分析很难检测到。我们假设，在阵发性 AF（PAF）的纤维性颤动发作之间存在的致心律失常背景，可以通过对窦性节律 ECG 的复杂性分析来检测。在这项回顾性研究中，从 82 匹健康马和 10 匹诊断为 PAF 的马的常规临床工作中获得了 ECG 记录。使用阈值交叉、节拍检测和一种新颖的特征检测解析算法，将无伪迹的 60 秒窦性节律 ECG 片段转换为二进制字符串。使用 Lempel-Ziv（'76 和 '78）和 Titchener 复杂度估算器计算生成的二进制字符串的复杂度。在使用特征检测方法处理获得的低心率（25-60 bpm）的 ECG 片段时，发现 Lempel-Ziv '76 和 Titchener T 复杂度对心率的依赖性在对照动物和诊断为 PAF 的动物中显著不同。这使得可以从窦性节律 ECG 中以高精度识别患有 PAF 的马。
