Reproducibility and Similarity Measures of Waveform Morphology in Atrial Fibrillation

A new method for ECG-based characterization of atrial fibrillation (AF) has been developed which allows comparison of different AF signal patterns for the purpose of identifying differences between patients, leads, hospital visits for the same patient and during treatment. The method transforms the atrial signal into a cluster description of typical waveform patterns and includes methodology for comparison of such descriptions. Reproducibility analysis in four AF signals suggests that the method has the ability to identify small differences in AF pattern. Furthermore, an electroatriogram is analyzed by the proposed method which illustrates the method’s capability to provide detailed information about the signal waveform differences between leads.