Atrial fibrillation frequency tracking in ambulatory ECG signals: The significance of signal quality assessment.

An approach to atrial fibrillation (AF) frequency tracking in long-term ambulatory ECG recordings is presented, comprising f-wave extraction, dominant atrial frequency (DAF) tracking, and signal quality assessment. Since poor signal quality is commonly encountered in ambulatory monitoring, a recently proposed index is employed to assess f-wave signal quality in a database containing 38 patients with permanent AF. The index ensures that DAF outliers, typically associated with poor-quality segments, are excluded from further analysis.

Electrocardiogram modeling during paroxysmal atrial fibrillation: application to the detection of brief episodes.

Objective: A model for simulating multi-lead ECG signals during paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (AF) is proposed.

Significance: The model is of particular significance when evaluating detection performance in the presence of brief AF episodes, especially since annotated databases with such episodes are lacking.

Approach: The proposed model accounts for important characteristics such as switching between sinus rhythm and AF, varying P-wave morphology, repetition rate of f-waves, presence of atrial premature beats, and various types of noise.