A survey on analysis of ST-segment to diagnose coronary artery disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD) arises when there is an obstacle in the arteries that supplies blood to the heart. It is due to the cholesterol deposition on the walls of the blood vessels. In India, it is estimated that one fifth of all deaths are due to CAD. Analysis of ST segment elevation is the most widely used approach to detect coronary artery disease. Several conditions that are associated with the elevation of ST - Segment are Myocardial Infarction, pericarditis, Myocarditis, Bundle Branch Block, and early repolarization. It is very difficult to distinguish these conditions for the physician. The early diagnosis of these diseases is important for the cardiac patients. This paper reviews the challenges in the diagnosis of cardiac diseases using ECG signal and the recent trends in method of analysis of ST segment on ECG signal by presenting the ECG signal preprocessing, feature extraction and classification techniques.