ECG Signal Analysis for Troponin Level Assessment and Coronary Artery Disease Detection: The NEEDED Study 2014

Physical exercise is widely recognized as beneficial to the cardiovascular system. However, intense exercise may also carry fatal risk. Investigation of this phenomenon is one of the primary purposes of the North Sea Race Endurance Exercise Study (NEEDED). This paper describes analysis of electrocardiograms (ECG) and heart rate signals collected from amateur athletes, participants of the race, to facilitate noninvasive estimation of the level of cardiac troponin I (cardiovas-cular risk biomarker) and detection of coronary artery disease (CAD). It was demonstrated that the combination of ECG and heart rate parameters can predict CAD with high specificity (up to 98 %) and relatively good sensitivity. Moreover, while troponin level assessment is unlikely to be reliably performed using regression techniques, it might be possible using a new, probabilistic classification-based model. Further evaluation of the latter requires the use of additional data, which is one of possible directions for the future work.