Predicting the onset of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation: theComputers
in Cardiology Challenge 2001

Moody, G.  Goldberger, A.  McClennen, S.  Swiryn, S.


This paper appears in: Computers in Cardiology 2001
Publication Date: 2001
On page(s): 113-116
Meeting Date: 09/23/2001 - 09/26/2001
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands
ISBN: 0-7803-7266-2
References Cited: 12
INSPEC Accession Number: 7176641
DOI: 10.1109/CIC.2001.977604
Posted online: 2002-08-06 23:57:51.0

Abstract
The advent of pacing techniques for preventing the onset of atrial
arrhythmias motivates the development of accurate predictors of these
arrhythmias, and of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (PAF) in particular
The goals of the second annual Computers in Cardiology Challenge were
to determine if segments of ECG that do not include PAF contain
information sufficient (1) to distinguish subjects at risk of PAF from
others not at risk, and (2) to predict imminent PAF in at-risk
subjects. Via PhysioNet, 18 teams of participants studied training and
test databases containing two half-hour ECG recordings from each of
100 subjects (of whom 53 experienced PAF immediately following one of
the two recordings). The results indicate that roughly 80% of the
subjects can be correctly classified (as at-risk or not), and that
imminent PAF can be predicted in roughly 80% of subjects at risk. The
most successful approaches were based on analyses of the incidence of
premature atrial complexes (PACs) and P-wave variability