Characterization of heart atrial fibrillation: proposal for a deterministic model.
Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) has been shown (e.g. Framingham Study) to increase stroke risk and to induce low cardiac output in patients. It is generally accepted that the mechanism of Atrial Fibrillation is reentry. In order to ease the study of AFib's, we propose a deterministic model that could be used in the characterization cardiac signals. The model is based on a linear combination of several "Atrial Flutter"-like signals. We therefore obtained AFib-like aspects. To demonstrate its usefulness we performed a power spectrum transform (i.e. scalar Fast Fourier Transform) of this model. As a result we found that this transform could not be used as is, could lead to errors in the interpretation of results. We expect that this model will help us to evaluate the relevance of mathematical transforms. This may lead to new findings in the classification of AFib, as well as to improvements in patients treatment, follow-up and survival.