EFFECTS OF SLOPE COMPUTATION ALGORITHM ON ACTIVATION DETECTION.

Activation detection by each of four algorithms used to calculate maximum derivatives was tested on two sequential paced beats of right-ventricular unipolar epicardial electrograms that represented either local activation of the right ventricle alone or synchronous activation of both ventricles. The methods were evaluated by comparing the shape and potential values of the two beats time-aligned on the time at which their maximum negative deflections occurred and by measuring the elapsed time between the pacing artifact and the fastest downstroke for both beats. No significant differences were found when the three methods that determined the slope over an interval of two-to-five samples were compared while the algorithm which incorporated information from a seventeen-sample interval performed slightly better as an activation detector.