Analysis of late potentials associated with chagasic myocarditis by means of time-frequency representations

Chagasic myocarditis is a major cause of cardiac death in Latin America. The infection gradually leads to bundle branch block hypertrophy and a common end point is arrhythmic death. The authors' purpose is to identify distinct stages in the evolution of chagasic myocarditis by means of time-frequency representations of the high resolution electrocardiogram, as the short-time Fourier transform, the wavelet transform and the Wigner-Ville distribution. Preliminary results suggest that time-frequency late potential indexes can improve the clinical predictive value of the HRECG for detecting arrhythmic events of patients with Chagas' disease.