Background
The refractory period (RP) and the conduction delay (CD) of the atrioventricular (AV) node play a crucial role in regulating the heart rate during atrial fibrillation (AF). Assessing short-term variations in these conduction properties could provide novel information for improved diagnosis and treatment optimization on an individual basis.
Methods
We propose a methodology comprising a network model of the AV node, a particle filter, and a smoothing algorithm to quantify the conduction properties for each heartbeat. The methodology was evaluated using simulated data and applied to endocardial recordings from five patients in the Intracardiac Atrial Fibrillation Database (PhysioNet).