a method for synthesizing electrocardiogram leads includes obtaining a sequence of voltage - time measurements for a set of electrocardiogram leads and subjecting the measurements to abstract factor analysis to obtain a set of eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors . a minimal subset of electrocardiogram leads is identified from which the voltage - time measurements can be calculated with acceptable error . simplex optimization is performed on a subset of the voltage - time measurements measured with the minimal subset of electrocardiogram leads to obtain a universal transformation matrix , and the universal transformation matrix is multiplied by the subset of the voltage - time measurements to calculate the full set of voltage - time measurements . the full set of leads can be used to calculate a body surface map , and the eigenvalues can be tracked in time to predict the onset of pathology such as myocardial infarction .