Phase-rectified signal averaging used to estimate the dominant frequencies in ECG signals during atrial fibrillation

Phase-rectified signal averaging (PRSA) is a technique recently introduced to enhance quasi-periodic signal components. An important parameter that can be extracted from surface ECG is the dominant frequency (DF) of atrial fibrillation (AF). AF signal components are always highly contaminated by the ventricular complexes, and the cancellation of these components is never perfect. The remaining artifacts tend to induce erroneous DF estimates. In this paper, we report on the use of PRSA in the context of noninvasive AF classification procedures for improving DF estimation. The potential of PRSA is demonstrated by experiments both on synthetic and clinical ECG signals.