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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

A New Single Chamber Implantable Defibrillator with Atrial Sensing: A Practical Demonstration of Sensing and Ease of Implantation
Published on: February 28, 2012
Real time detection of ventricular fibrillation and tachycardia
Irena Jekova1, Vessela Krasteva
1Centre of Biomedical Engineering, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria. irena@clbme.bas.bg
Abstract:
The automatic external defibrillator (AED) is a lifesaving device, which processes and analyses the electrocardiogram (ECG) and delivers a defibrillation shock to terminate ventricular fibrillation or tachycardia above 180 bpm. The built-in algorithm for ECG analysis has to discriminate between shockable and non-shockable rhythms and its accuracy, represented by sensitivity and specificity, is aimed at approaching the maximum values of 100%. An algorithm for VF/VT detection is proposed using a band-pass digital filter with integer coefficients, which is very simple to implement in real-time operation. A branch for wave detection is activated for heart rate measurement and an auxiliary parameter calculation. The method was tested with ECG records from the widely recognized databases of the American Heart Association (AHA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A sensitivity of 95.93% and a specificity of 94.38% were obtained.
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