Detection of myocardial scar from the VCG using a supervised learning approach

This paper addresses the possibility of detecting presence of scar tissue in the myocardium through the in- vestigation of vectorcardiogram (VCG) characteristics. Scarred myocardium is the result of myocardial infarction (MI) due to ischemia and creates a substrate for the manifestation of fatal arrhythmias. Our efforts are focused on the development of a classification scheme for the early screening of patients for the presence of scar. More specifically, a supervised learning model based on the extracted VCG features is proposed and validated through comprehensive testing analysis. The achieved accuracy of 82.36% (sensitivity 84.31%, specificity 77.36%) indicates the potential of the proposed screening mechanism for detecting the presence/absence of scar tissue.