Analysis of RR interval and fibrillation frequency and amplitude for predicting spontaneous termination of atrial fibrillation

We assessed characteristics of atrial and ventricular activity from the ECG for predicting the oflset of atrial fibrillation for the 2004 PhysioNet/Computers in Cardiology Challenge. Seven parameters were analysed with five based on the statistical characteristics of the RR interval (mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis and median beat-to-beat change), and fibrillation frequency and atrial signal amplitude. The power of the parameters to predict termination of the arrhythmia was assessed individually and in combination using linear discriminant analysis ( D A ) and a?t$cial neural network (ANN) techniques. Fibrillation fiequency with a threshold value of 5.55 Hz was able to idenrify 10/10 learning set records which terminated immediately (T) and 8/10 of non-terminating records (N) and was the best of the individual parameters. Classifcations for the test set for event 1 of the challenge for algorithms based on fibrillation frequency alone, LDA and ANN received scores of 24/30, 18/30 and 23/30 respectively. Low jibrillation frequency is an indicator of spontaneous termination of atrial fibrillation.