Algorithm for analysis of Atrial Fibrillation by cancellation of ventricular activity on electrocardiogram
Miriam Ferraz de Paulo1; Eduardo Guy Perpétuo Bock1; Dalmo Antonio Ribeiro Moreira2
1 Instituto Federal de Educação Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo, São Paulo; 2 Instituto Dante Pazzanese de Cardiologia de São Paulo
doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0915
Resumo
Atrial fibrillation is a common heart disease and it reaches between 1.5% to 2% of the global population. It occurs when different spreading patterns emerge in the atria electrical activity and it can affect the pulse by changing the heart beat to irregular and faster pulsation. The Electrocardiogram represents the heart electrical activity. It is divided in waves that receive letters names. The P wave represents the atrial cells depolarization. During atrial fibrillation, a wandering baseline takes place of the P wave. Despite the symptoms such as palpitations, sudden tiredness, dizziness, discomfort in breathing, patients can live with the disease. But after years, it can lead to complications such as systemic thromboembolism and it can cause a stroke or a thrombosis accident. The diagnosis of atrial fibrillation requires the medical confirmation of his electrocardiogram records. As atrial activity occurs independently of ventricular activity, the proposed algorithm aims to analyze and characterize atrial fibrillation cancelling the ventricular activity. Thus, it is possible to observe only the atrial activity after removing the QRS complex and the T wave. Since P wave is synchronized with the atrial contraction, it is possible to detect the atrial fibrillation and analyze its behavior. In order to evaluate the algorithm performance, ECG waves of atrial fibrillation were collected from Physionet database and tested in MATLAB environment. In future, the algorithm will be used in patients of Institute Dante Pazzanese of Cardiology providing real ECG for algorithm validation.
Palavras-chave: atrial fibrillation; QRST cancellation; cancellation of ventricular activity