Prediction of Sudden Cardiac Death among Malaysians

Sudden cardiac death is also known as SCD, which is a natural death caused by failure of the heart function. It is different from heart attack as SCD does not cause injuries to the victims. Researchers have developed many devices using heart rate variability (HRV) to predict SCD but the best technique is still yet to be discovered. HRV is said to be the potential predictors for SCD. In this paper, two types of peak detectors are evaluated to measure which one is the most robust. Firstly, visual inspection of electrocardiogram (ECG) is carried out by observing the P wave, QRS complex, R peak, T wave, ST segment and also some abnormalities in ECG, where initial interpretation can be made. 62 recordings of 10 seconds ECG from a single patient are combined to view the overall ECG waveform. An algorithm is developed to clean the ECG and to detect R peak. From the results, it is found that ‘QRS_detect2’ function is a better peak detector as it demonstrates more accurate and precise marks on every R peak. As a conclusion, prediction of SCD can be performed using HRV with ‘QRS_detect2’ as the R peak detectors