Detection of ventricular fibrillation and tachycardia from the surface ECG by a set of parameters acquired from four methods.

Centre of Biomedical Engineering, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Acad. G Bonchev str. bl. 105, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria. irena@clbme.bas.bg

The recent development and increased application of automatic external defibrillators have prescribed very strong requirements towards ventricular fibrillation (VF) and fast ventricular tachycardia (VT > 180 bpm) detection from the surface electrocardiogram (ECG). We attempted to use informative parameters from several existing analysis methods and from a method developed in-house. A set of nine parameters was derived initially, with four of them being selected after statistical assessment. Detection of VF against non-shockable rhythms was obtained using the K-nearest neighbours classification method, with 98.6% specificity and 96.7% sensitivity. The detection accuracy remained high after inclusion of VT episodes above and below 180 bpm to shockable and non-shockable rhythms respectively and after the addition of noise. Test signals were taken from the well-known ECG signal databases of the American Heart Association and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Beth Israel Hospital (MIT-BIH-'cudb' and 'vfdb' files).

PMID: 12450264 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]