Atrium Fibrillation Detection - Interference suppression

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a progressive disease and associated with severe complications such as stroke. Early treatment of AF is of paramount importance as it inhibits disease progression from the treatable (recurrent intermittent) to the untreatable (permanent) stage of AF. However, early treatment is seriously hampered by lack of accurate diagnostic instruments to recognize patients who will develop new onset AF or progress to a severer form of the disease.

Erasmus MC developed a 192-channel measurement device to capture signals from the atrium during open heart surgery. These heart-beat signals appear to be contaminated by similar signals from the ventricle. The latter signals can also be captured using regular ECG (i.e., a reference signal is available). Current processing consists of manual detection of the interfering signal, and "blanking" (throwing away) the contaminated part.

Our aim is to use tools from array signal processing to do the source separation and detection.

Assignment

Research questions are:

• Can the detection be automated?
• Is a reference signal needed or can it be done blindly?
• Can the interference be removed using spatial filtering techniques?

Requirements

Background in statistical signal processing/array signal processing (e.g. EE4C03, et4147, et4386).

The student will stay partly at Erasmus MC.

Contact

prof.dr.ir. Alle-Jan van der Veen

Signal Processing Systems Group

Department of Microelectronics

Last modified: 2017-10-20