Atrial activity extraction from single lead ECG recordings: evaluation of two novel methods

Two different methods for extracting atrial activity (AA) signal from single lead electrocardiogram (ECG) of atrial fibrillation were proposed. The first one is a weighted average beat subtraction (WABS) method. Coefficients of QRS complexes used for constructing QRS template were obtained by minimizing mean square error. The second method is based on maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Probability density functions of AA signal and ventricular activity (VA) signals were estimated using generalized Gaussian model. Then AA signal was extracted by maximizing likelihood function. Simulated signal and clinical ECG were used to evaluate the performance of ABS, WABS and MLE-based algorithm. In comparison with ABS, WABS and MLE-based algorithm reduced normal mean square error by 23.5% and 20.2%, respectively.