Investigation of the Relational Strength Between Suspected Atrial Fibrillation Triggers and Detector-Based Arrhythmia Episode Occurrence

Vilma Pluščiauskaitė, Andrius Petrėnas, Andrius Petrėnas

2025

Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AF) treatment remains challenging, with current options often limited to anticoagulants and antiarrhythmic medications. Growing evidence suggests that acute exposures, referred to as AF triggers, can initiate AF in some patients. Therefore, identifying and managing personal triggers may serve as an effective strategy to complement conventional treatment. This study explores the utility of wearable-based biosignals to assess the relational strength between the suspected triggers and AF occurrence when episodes are detected using electrocardiogram (ECG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG). Biosignals from 33 patients with paroxysmal AF (mean age 61 ± 13 years), who wore an ECG patch and a wrist-worn PPG device during a 7.0 ± 0.7 day observation period, were used in the study. Suspected triggers due to physical exertion, psychophysiological stress, and lying on the left side were identified based on a detection parameter calculated over successive segments of the ECG and/or acceleration signals. The relational strength between a suspected trigger and AF episodes is quantified based on AF burden, defined as the ratio of time spent in AF to the total analysis time interval, assuming that the post-trigger AF burden is greater than the pre-trigger AF burden. The results indicate that the relational strength between suspected triggers and AF episode occurrence, as detected using ECG- and PPG-based AF detectors, differs from manual annotation by an average of 0.03±0.15 and -0.21±0.21, respectively. This study demonstrates the potential of wearable-based biosignals in providing personalized identification of suspected AF triggers. However, challenges such as non-wear periods and poor PPG signal quality remain to be addressed for practical applications.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Pluščiauskaitė V. and Petrėnas A. (2025). Investigation of the Relational Strength Between Suspected Atrial Fibrillation Triggers and Detector-Based Arrhythmia Episode Occurrence. In Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS; ISBN 978-989-758-731-3, SciTePress, pages 805-810. DOI: 10.5220/0013343000003911

in Bibtex Style

@conference{biosignals25,
author={Vilma Pluščiauskaitė and Andrius Petrėnas},
title={Investigation of the Relational Strength Between Suspected Atrial Fibrillation Triggers and Detector-Based Arrhythmia Episode Occurrence},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS},
year={2025},
pages={805-810},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013343000003911},
isbn={978-989-758-731-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 18th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies - Volume 1: BIOSIGNALS
TI - Investigation of the Relational Strength Between Suspected Atrial Fibrillation Triggers and Detector-Based Arrhythmia Episode Occurrence
SN - 978-989-758-731-3
AU - Pluščiauskaitė V.
AU - Petrėnas A.
PY - 2025
SP - 805
EP - 810
DO - 10.5220/0013343000003911
PB - SciTePress