This diploma thesis deals with the analysis of experimental electrograms (EG) recorded from isolated rabbit hearts. The theoretical part is focused on the basic principles of electrocardiography, pathological events in ECGs, automatic classification of ECG and experimental cardiological research. The practical part deals with manual classification of individual pathological events – these results will be presented in the database of EG records, which is under developing at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at BUT nowadays. Manual scoring of data was discussed with experts. After that, the presence of pathological events within particular experimental periods was described and influence of ischemia on heart electrical activity was reviewed. In the last part, morphological parameters calculated from EG beats were statistically analised with Kruskal-Wallis and Tukey-Kramer tests and also principal component analysis (PCA) and used as classification features to classify automatically four types of the beats. Classification was realized with four approaches such as discriminant function analysis, k-Nearest Neighbours, support vector machines, and naive Bayes classifier.

Srdeční poruchy, jejichž příkladem je ischemie myokardu, infarkt, hypertrofie levé komory a myokarditida, jsou v experimentální kardiologii obvykle studovány na modelu izolovaného srdce. Kritéria pro detekci srdečních poruch však nejsou pro zvířecí modely standardizována, což komplikuje srovnání a interpretaci výsledků různých experimentálních studií. Obzvlášť složitá situace nastává při současném výskytu několika patologických jevů, jejichž vzájemná součinnost komplikuje rozpoznání jejich individuálních účinků. Korektní posouzení stavu srdce vyžaduje také zohlednění mnoha faktorů spojených s akvizicí dat. Tato práce je věnována kvantitativnímu hodnocení elektrofyziologických změn způsobených globální ischemií myokardu. Vliv ischemie byl hodnocen pro fyziologická srdce a srdce se zvětšenou levou komorou a dále pro srdce nabarvená napěťově-citlivým barvivem di-4-ANEPPS. Přestože jsou oba fenomény často zastoupeny v animálních studiích, nebyl dosud popsán jejich vliv na manifestaci ischemie v elektrogramech (EG), ani nebyl kvantifikován jejich vliv na přesnost detekčních algoritmů pro identifikaci ischemie. Práce shrnuje kvantitativní změny srdeční funkce vyvolané ischemií (v normálních podmínkách, při hypertrofii levé komory, a při administraci barviva) založené na hodnocení EG a VKG parametrů. Dále práce obsahuje rozbor důležitých aspektů akvizice záznamů, jako je umístění snímacích elektrod, způsob výpočtu deskriptorů z EG a VKG (s použitím výsledků manuálního rozměření záznamů, nebo bez něj) a identifikace okamžiku vývoje ischemie v preparátu. Nedílnou součást práce tvoří návrh, realizace a ověření metod pro automatickou detekci ischemie v experimentálních záznamech. Výsledky práce dokazují, že dosažení opakovatelných a věrohodných výsledků je podmíněno zohledněním všech výše uvedených faktorů souvisejících jak se stavem srdce, tak s metodikou záznamu a analýzy dat.

Hypoxic-ischemic insult is a most common form of perinatal brain damage that threatens a newborn's life and can leads to permanent neurological sequelae. However, detailed aspects of the cerebral ischemia in the immature brain stay unanswered. We decide to use the model of focal cerebral ischemia induced by intrahippocampal endothelin-1 (ET-1) in 12-days-old rats. The knowledge about consequences of ET-1 induced ischemia and the role of endothelin receptors (ETA and ETB) in ischemia-induced consequences in immature brain are poor at present. Agonists and selective antagonists of the ETA and ETB receptors were used to determine the role of these receptors in the development of ischemia, changes in regional blood flow and tissue oxygenation, local changes of biochemical parameters and acute neuronal death. Our results indicates, that activation of the ETA receptors causes a strong decrease of the blood flow, induced related hypoxia and subsequent neuronal degeneration, whereas activation of ETB receptors has likely modulatory role. Moreover, ischemia causes increase of excitatory amino acids concentration, whereas inhibitory amino acid, except taurine, decreased after ischemia. These facts provides new insights in a case of perinatal ischemia. This thesis demonstrates the wide range of different effects of...

Adaptation to chronic hypoxia activates endogenous signaling cascades, which lead to cardiac protection against acute ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury. The molecular mechanism of this phenomenon has not been fully clarified yet. However, it was proved that reactive oxygen species (ROS) take part in cardioprotective signaling pathway inducted by chronic hypoxia. The high level of ROS must be precisely regulated by antioxidative system of a cell. The aim of diploma thesis was to examine the effect of intermittent hypobaric hypoxia (IHH, 7 000 m) on relative amount of antioxidative enzymes (peroxiredoxin 6 - PRX6, thioredoxin 1 and 2 - TRX1 and TRX2, thioredoxin reductase 1 - TRXR1) and also enzymes of iron metabolism (heme oxygenase 1 and 2 - HO1 and HO2, aconitase 1 and 2 - ACO1 and ACO2), which participate in regulation of cell redox state. Moreover, we studied the effect of adaptation to IHH and an antioxidant tempol on relative amount of calcium-independent phospholipase A2 (iPLA2). iPLA2 can remove peroxidized fatty acids from membrane phospholipids. On the other hand, iPLA2 can damage cell in I/R conditions. All enzymes were studied in homogenates from normoxic and IHH adapted rat left ventricular myocardium by Western blot. Adaptation to IHH caused a decrease of PRX6 and on the opposite an increase of...

Diabetic foot disease (DFD) is a serious complication of diabetes and, along with critical limb ischemia, significantly exacerbates the prognosis of patients. Peripheral arterial disease in patients with diabetes has an atypical clinical course, its diagnosis is challenging and is one of the most common causes of morbidity and mortality of patients with DFD. The aim of this dissertation focused on the diagnosis and treatment of DFD was to identify a suitable method for evaluating the effect of autologous cell therapy (ACT), to assess options for early diagnosis of Charcot osteoarthropathy (COA) and, possibly, to establish the association between the incidence of cardiovascular disease and DFD. In our studies concerning therapeutic vasculogenesis, we observed a significant increase in the antiangiogenic factor endostatin after ACT in contrast to its unchanged levels after standard percutaneous transluminal angioplasty; the transient increase in endostatin seems to be a marker of therapeutic vasculogenesis after ACT. A benefit of using calf muscle perfusion scintigraphy in the assessment of microcirculation and ACT effect was not clearly demonstrated. By contrast, a promising method for the evaluation of microcirculation and the effect of revascularization after ACT was MR spectroscopy of calf...

The aim of this thesis is to describe the variability of cardiac rhythm and familiarity with the methods of the analysis, ie by monitoring changes in heart rhythm electrogram signal recording and using the methods in the time domain using recurrent diagram. The work describes the quantification of the methods and possibilities of quantifiers in the evaluation of heart rate variability analysis. It also describes the clinical significance of heart rate variability and diagnostic capabilities changes of heart rate variability caused by ischemic heart disease. The practical part describes how to create applications in Matlab to calculate the quantifiers analysis of heart rate variability in the time domain using recurrent diagram. The calculation was made of the positions R wave elektrogram signal isolated rabbit hearts. The calculated values of quantifiers both methods were statistically evaluated and discussed.

This thesis deals with time-frequency analysis of electrograms measured on isolated guinea pig hearts perfused according to Langendorff. Time-frequency analysis is based on algorithms Matching Pursuit and Wigner-Ville Distribution. The theoretical part describes the basics of electrocardiography, measurement on isolated hearts, the theory of approximation method Matching Pursuit and its combination with the Wigner-Ville distribution spectrum showing the energy density of the signal. Also other common approaches of time-frequency analysis are presented including the theory of continuous wavelet transform. The presented algorithms were tested on a set of electrograms, on which were induced ischemia within measurement followed by reperfusion. The proposed method allows for the fast detection of ischemia without any a priori knowledge of the signal, and also serves as a tool for measurement of EG important points and intervals. In the conclusion efficacy of the method was presented and its possible uses has been discussed.