Nonlinear analysis of electrocardiography signals for atrial fibrillation

This paper aims to analyze the electrocardiography (ECG) signals for patient with atrial fibrillation (AF) by using bispectrum and extreme learning machine (ELM). AF is the most common irregular heart beat disease which may cause many cardiac diseases as well. Bispectral analysis was used to extract the nonlinear information in the ECG signals. The bispectral features of each ECG episode were determined and fed to the ELM classifier. The classification accuracy of ELM to distinguish nonterminating, terminating AF, and terminating immediately AF was 96.25%. In this study, the normal ECG signal was also compared with AF ECG signal due to the nonlinearity which was determined by bispectrum. The classification result of ELM was 99.15% to distinguish AF ECGs from normal ECGs.