Arrhythmia diagnosis using morphology and timing from atrial and ventricular leads

A two-channel computer arrhythmia detection system has been designed and successfully tested on a database of simultaneous esophageal electrograms and surface-lead ECGs. The system examines the morphology of atrial depolarization on the esophageal electrogram as well as QRS morphology on the surface ECG. This allows recognition of both ectopic and retrograde atrial activation. The system measures the interval between two consecutive atrial depolarizations, the interval between two consecutive ventricular depolarizations, and the interval between the atrial and ventricular depolarizations. The system has been tested on 29 passages from 21 patients. The results yielded 99.2% accuracy for single-beat diagnosis and 99.5% accuracy for underlying-arrhythmia diagnosis. There were no false positives or false negatives.<<ETX>>