Autocorrelation of Ventricular Response in Atrial Fibrillation

Abstract

The autocorrelation function of the ventricular electrocardiogram was calculated on an IBM-650 computer. The resulting function can lie fitted by an exponential-cosine function. This result is typical for a mixture of periodic and unperiodic events. For different patients, various degrees of periodicity were put in evidence by this method on a quantitative basis; the ventricular response was never completely irregular. In all cases investigated so far, the period that corresponds to the periodic component of the autocorrelation function was more rapid than the average rate of ventricular conduction.