Phase-rectified signal averaging: a useful tool for the estimation of the dominant frequency in ECG signals during atrial fibrillation.

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common type of human cardiac arrhythmia. An important parameter that can be extracted from surface electrocardiogram (ECG) during AF is the dominant frequency (DF) of AF. Unfortunately, AF signal components are always highly contaminated by the ventricular QRST complexes, and the cancellation of these components is never perfect. The remaining artifacts tend to induce DF overestimates. In this paper we report on the use of phase-rectified signal analysis, a technique introduced recently to enhance quasi-periodic signal components, for improving DF estimation. The potential of phase-rectified analysis is demonstrated through experiments both on synthetic and clinical ECG signals.