Download or read book A Biosystems Approach to Industrial Patient Monitoring and Diagnostic Devices written by Gail Baura and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A medical device is an apparatus that uses engineering and scientific principles to interface to physiology and diagnose or treat a disease. In this Lecture, we specifically consider thosemedical devices that are computer based, and are therefore referred to as medical instruments. Further, the medical instruments we discuss are those that incorporate system theory into their designs. We divide these types of instruments into those that provide continuous observation and those that provide a single snapshot of health information. These instruments are termed patient monitoring devices and diagnostic devices, respectively.Within this Lecture, we highlight some of the common system theory techniques that are part of the toolkit of medical device engineers in industry. These techniques include the pseudorandom binary sequence, adaptive filtering, wavelet transforms, the autoregressive moving average model with exogenous input, artificial neural networks, fuzzy models, and fuzzy control. Because the clinical usage requirements for patient monitoring and diagnostic devices are so high, system theory is the preferred substitute for heuristic, empirical processing during noise artifact minimization and classification. Table of Contents: Preface / Medical Devices / System Theory / Patient Monitoring Devices / Diagnostic Devices / Conclusion / Author Biography

Download or read book Medical Device Technologies written by Gail D. Baura and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2011-10-07 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medical Device Technologies introduces undergraduate engineering students to commonly manufactured medical devices. It is the first textbook that discusses both electrical and mechanical medical devices. The first 20 chapters are medical device technology chapters; the remaining eight chapters focus on medical device laboratory experiments. Each medical device chapter begins with an exposition of appropriate physiology, mathematical modeling or biocompatibility issues, and clinical need. A device system description and system diagram provide details on technology function and administration of diagnosis and/or therapy. The systems approach lets students quickly identify the relationships between devices. Device key features are based on five applicable consensus standard requirements from organizations such as ISO and the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI). The medical devices discussed are Nobel Prize or Lasker Clinical Prize winners, vital signs devices, and devices in high industry growth areas Three significant Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recall case studies which have impacted FDA medical device regulation are included in appropriate device chapters Exercises at the end of each chapter include traditional homework problems, analysis exercises, and four questions from assigned primary literature Eight laboratory experiments are detailed that provide hands-on reinforcement of device concepts

Download or read book Biomaterials Science written by Buddy D. Ratner and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 1610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The revised edition of this renowned and bestselling title is the most comprehensive single text on all aspects of biomaterials science. It provides a balanced, insightful approach to both the learning of the science and technology of biomaterials and acts as the key reference for practitioners who are involved in the applications of materials in medicine. - Over 29,000 copies sold, this is the most comprehensive coverage of principles and applications of all classes of biomaterials: "the only such text that currently covers this area comprehensively" - Materials Today - Edited by four of the best-known figures in the biomaterials field today; fully endorsed and supported by the Society for Biomaterials - Fully revised and expanded, key new topics include of tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, and new clinical applications, with new teaching and learning material throughout, case studies and a downloadable image bank

Download or read book Medical Equipment Maintenance written by Binseng Wang and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In addition to being essential for safe and effective patient care, medical equipment also has significant impact on the income and, thus, vitality of healthcare organizations. For this reason, its maintenance and management requires careful supervision by healthcare administrators, many of whom may not have the technical background to understand all of the relevant factors. This book presents the basic elements of medical equipment maintenance and management required of healthcare leaders responsible for managing or overseeing this function. It will enable these individuals to understand their professional responsibilities, as well as what they should expect from their supervised staff and how to measure and benchmark staff performance against equivalent performance levels at similar organizations. The book opens with a foundational summary of the laws, regulations, codes, and standards that are applicable to the maintenance and management of medical equipment in healthcare organizations. Next, the core functions of the team responsible for maintenance and management are described in sufficient detail for managers and overseers. Then the methods and measures for determining the effectiveness and efficiency of equipment maintenance and management are presented to allow performance management and benchmarking comparisons. The challenges and opportunities of managing healthcare organizations of different sizes, acuity levels, and geographical locations are discussed. Extensive bibliographic sources and material for further study are provided to assist students and healthcare leaders interested in acquiring more detailed knowledge. Table of Contents: Introduction / Regulatory Framework / Core Functions of Medical Equipment Maintenance and Management / CE Department Management / Performance Management / Discussion and Conclusions

Download or read book The Graph Theoretical Approach in Brain Functional Networks written by Fabrizio Fallani and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present book illustrates the theoretical aspects of several methodologies related to the possibility of i) enhancing the poor spatial information of the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity on the scalp and giving a measure of the electrical activity on the cortical surface. ii) estimating the directional influences between any given pair of channels in a multivariate dataset. iii) modeling the brain networks as graphs. The possible applications are discussed in three different experimental designs regarding i) the study of pathological conditions during a motor task, ii) the study of memory processes during a cognitive task iii) the study of the instantaneous dynamics throughout the evolution of a motor task in physiological conditions. The main outcome from all those studies indicates clearly that the performance of cognitive and motor tasks as well as the presence of neural diseases can affect the brain network topology. This evidence gives the power of reflecting cerebral "states" or "traits" to the mathematical indexes derived from the graph theory. In particular, the observed structural changes could critically depend on patterns of synchronization and desynchronization - i.e. the dynamic binding of neural assemblies - as also suggested by a wide range of previous electrophysiological studies. Moreover, the fact that these patterns occur at multiple frequencies support the evidence that brain functional networks contain multiple frequency channels along which information is transmitted. The graph theoretical approach represents an effective means to evaluate the functional connectivity patterns obtained from scalp EEG signals. The possibility to describe the complex brain networks sub-serving different functions in humans by means of "numbers" is a promising tool toward the generation of a better understanding of the brain functions. Table of Contents: Introduction / Brain Functional Connectivity / Graph Theory / High-Resolution EEG / Cortical Networks in Spinal Cord Injured Patients / Cortical Networks During a Lifelike Memory Task / Application to Time-varying Cortical Networks / Conclusions

Download or read book Modeling and Analysis of Shape with Applications in Computer aided Diagnosis of Breast Cancer written by Denise Guliato and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 75 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malignant tumors due to breast cancer and masses due to benign disease appear in mammograms with different shape characteristics: the former usually have rough, spiculated, or microlobulated contours, whereas the latter commonly have smooth, round, oval, or macrolobulated contours. Features that characterize shape roughness and complexity can assist in distinguishing between malignant tumors and benign masses. In spite of the established importance of shape factors in the analysis of breast tumors and masses, difficulties exist in obtaining accurate and artifact-free boundaries of the related regions from mammograms. Whereas manually drawn contours could contain artifacts related to hand tremor and are subject to intra-observer and inter-observer variations, automatically detected contours could contain noise and inaccuracies due to limitations or errors in the procedures for the detection and segmentation of the related regions. Modeling procedures are desired to eliminate the artifacts in a given contour, while preserving the important and significant details present in the contour. This book presents polygonal modeling methods that reduce the influence of noise and artifacts while preserving the diagnostically relevant features, in particular the spicules and lobulations in the given contours. In order to facilitate the derivation of features that capture the characteristics of shape roughness of contours of breast masses, methods to derive a signature based on the turning angle function obtained from the polygonal model are described. Methods are also described to derive an index of spiculation, an index characterizing the presence of convex regions, an index characterizing the presence of concave regions, an index of convexity, and a measure of fractal dimension from the turning angle function. Results of testing the methods with a set of 111 contours of 65 benign masses and 46 malignant tumors are presented and discussed. It is shown that shape modeling and analysis can lead to classification accuracy in discriminating between benign masses and malignant tumors, in terms of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, of up to 0.94. The methods have applications in modeling and analysis of the shape of various types of regions or objects in images, computer vision, computer graphics, and analysis of biomedical images, with particular significance in computer-aided diagnosis of breast cancer. Table of Contents: Analysis of Shape / Polygonal Modeling of Contours / Shape Factors for Pattern Classification / Classification of Breast Masses

Download or read book Introductory Medical Imaging written by Anil Bharath and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introduction to the principles of several of the more widely used methods in medical imaging. Intended for engineering students, it provides a final-year undergraduate- or graduate-level introduction to several imaging modalities, including MRI, ultrasound, and X-Ray CT. The emphasis of the text is on mathematical models for imaging and image reconstruction physics. Emphasis is also given to sources of imaging artefacts. Such topics are usually not addressed across the different imaging modalities in one book, and this is a notable strength of the treatment given here. Table of Contents: Introduction / Diagnostic X-Ray Imaging / X-Ray CT / Ultrasonics / Pulse-Echo Ultrasonic Imaging / Doppler Velocimetry / An Introduction to MRI

Download or read book Content based Retrieval of Medical Images written by Paulo Mazzoncini de Azevedo-Marques and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is the process of retrieval of images from a database that are similar to a query image, using measures derived from the images themselves, rather than relying on accompanying text or annotation. To achieve CBIR, the contents of the images need to be characterized by quantitative features; the features of the query image are compared with the features of each image in the database and images having high similarity with respect to the query image are retrieved and displayed. CBIR of medical images is a useful tool and could provide radiologists with assistance in the form of a display of relevant past cases. One of the challenging aspects of CBIR is to extract features from the images to represent their visual, diagnostic, or application-specific information content. In this book, methods are presented for preprocessing, segmentation, landmarking, feature extraction, and indexing of mammograms for CBIR. The preprocessing steps include anisotropic diffusion and the Wiener filter to remove noise and perform image enhancement. Techniques are described for segmentation of the breast and fibroglandular disk, including maximum entropy, a moment-preserving method, and Otsu's method. Image processing techniques are described for automatic detection of the nipple and the edge of the pectoral muscle via analysis in the Radon domain. By using the nipple and the pectoral muscle as landmarks, mammograms are divided into their internal, external, upper, and lower parts for further analysis. Methods are presented for feature extraction using texture analysis, shape analysis, granulometric analysis, moments, and statistical measures. The CBIR system presented provides options for retrieval using the Kohonen self-organizing map and the k-nearest-neighbor method. Methods are described for inclusion of expert knowledge to reduce the semantic gap in CBIR, including the query point movement method for relevance feedback (RFb). Analysis of performance is described in terms of precision, recall, and relevance-weighted precision of retrieval. Results of application to a clinical database of mammograms are presented, including the input of expert radiologists into the CBIR and RFb processes. Models are presented for integration of CBIR and computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) with a picture archival and communication system (PACS) for efficient workflow in a hospital. Table of Contents: Introduction to Content-based Image Retrieval / Mammography and CAD of Breast Cancer / Segmentation and Landmarking of Mammograms / Feature Extraction and Indexing of Mammograms / Content-based Retrieval of Mammograms / Integration of CBIR and CAD into Radiological Workflow

Download or read book Health Care Engineering Part II written by Monique Frize and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part II of Health Care Engineering begins with statistics on the occurrence of medical errors and adverse events, and includes some technological solutions. A chapter on electronic medical records follows. The knowledge management process divided into four steps is described; this includes a discussion on data acquisition, storage, and retrieval. The next two chapters discuss the other three steps of the knowledge management process (knowledge discovery, knowledge translation, knowledge integration and sharing). The last chapter briefly discusses usability studies and clinical trials. This two-part book consolidates material that supports courses on technology development and management issues in health care institutions. It can be useful for anyone involved in design, development, or research, whether in industry, hospitals, or government.

Download or read book Strategic Health Technology Incorporation written by Binseng Wang and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technology is essential to the delivery of health care but it is still only a tool that needs to be deployed wisely to ensure beneficial outcomes at reasonable costs. Among various categories of health technology, medical equipment has the unique distinction of requiring both high initial investments and costly maintenance during its entire useful life. This characteristic does not, however, imply that medical equipment is more costly than other categories, provided that it is managed properly. The foundation of a sound technology management process is the planning and acquisition of equipment, collectively called technology incorporation. This lecture presents a rational, strategic process for technology incorporation based on experience, some successful and many unsuccessful, accumulated in industrialized and developing countries over the last three decades. The planning step is focused on establishing a Technology Incorporation Plan (TIP) using data collected from an audit of existing technology, evaluating needs, impacts, costs, and benefits, and consolidating the information collected for decision making. The acquisition step implements TIP by selecting equipment based on technical, regulatory, financial, and supplier considerations, and procuring it using one of the multiple forms of purchasing or agreements with suppliers. This incorporation process is generic enough to be used, with suitable adaptations, for a wide variety of health organizations with different sizes and acuity levels, ranging from health clinics to community hospitals to major teaching hospitals and even to entire health systems. Such a broadly applicable process is possible because it is based on a conceptual framework composed of in-depth analysis of the basic principles that govern each stage of technology lifecycle. Using this incorporation process, successful TIPs have been created and implemented, thereby contributing to the improvement of healthcare services and limiting the associated expenses. Table of Contents: Introduction / Conceptual Framework / The Incorporation Process / Discussion / Conclusions

Download or read book Health Care Engineering Part I written by Monique Frize and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first chapter describes the health care delivery systems in Canada and in the U.S. This is followed by examples of various approaches used to measure physiological variables in humans, either for the purpose of diagnosis or monitoring potential disease conditions; a brief description of sensor technologies is included. The function and role of the clinical engineer in managing medical technologies in industrialized and in developing countries are presented. This is followed by a chapter on patient safety (mainly electrical safety and electromagnetic interference); it includes a section on how to minimize liability and how to develop a quality assurance program for technology management. The next chapter discusses applications of telemedicine, including technical, social, and ethical issues. The last chapter presents a discussion on the impact of technology on health care and the technology assessment process. This two-part book consolidates material that supports courses on technology development and management issues in health care institutions. It can be useful for anyone involved in design, development, or research, whether in industry, hospitals, or government.

Download or read book Biomedical Technology Assessment written by Phillip Weinfurt and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluating biomedical technology poses a significant challenge in light of the complexity and rate of introduction in today's healthcare delivery system. Successful evaluation requires an integration of clinical medicine, science, finance, and market analysis. Little guidance, however, exists for those who must conduct comprehensive technology evaluations. The 3Q Method meets these present day needs. The 3Q Method is organized around 3 key questions dealing with 1) clinical and scientific basis, 2) financial fit and 3) strategic and expertise fit. Both healthcare providers (e.g., hospitals) and medical industry providers can use the Method to evaluate medical devices, information systems and work processes from their own perspectives. The book describes the 3Q Method in detail and provides additional suggestions for optimal presentation and report preparation. Table of Contents: Introduction / Question #1: Is It Real? / Question #2: Can We Win? / Question #3: Is It Worth It? / 3Q Case Study Example -- Pershing Medical Company / Appendix A: Health Care Technology Assessment Sample Class Syllabus / Appendix B: How do Hospitals and Clinicians Get Paid? / Appendix C: Technology Assessment PowerPoint Report Guidelines / Appendix D: Class Report Scenario Example / Appendix E: Four-Blocker Slide Templates for 3Q Reports

Download or read book Models of Horizontal Eye Movements written by Alireza Ghahari and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are five different types of eye movements: saccades, smooth pursuit, vestibular ocular eye movements, optokinetic eye movements, and vergence eye movements. The purpose of this book series is focused primarily on mathematical models of the horizontal saccadic eye movement system and the smooth pursuit system, rather than on how visual information is processed. In Part 1, early models of saccades and smooth pursuit are presented. A number of oculomotor plant models are described here beginning with the Westheimer model published in 1954, and up through our 1995 model involving a 4th order oculomotor plant model. In Part 2, a 2009 version of a state-of-the-art model is presented for horizontal saccades that is 3rd-order and linear, and controlled by a physiologically based time-optimal neural network. Part 3 describes a model of the saccade system, focusing on the neural network. It presents a neural network model of biophysical neurons in the midbrain for controlling oculomotor muscles during horizontal human saccades. In this book, a multiscale model of the saccade system is presented, focusing on a multiscale neural network and muscle fiber model. Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive model for the control of horizontal saccades using a muscle fiber model for the lateral and medial rectus muscles. The importance of this model is that each muscle fiber has a separate neural input. This model is robust and accounts for the neural activity for both large and small saccades. The muscle fiber model consists of serial sequences of muscle fibers in parallel with other serial sequences of muscle fibers. Each muscle fiber is described by a parallel combination of a linear length tension element, viscous element, and active-state tension generator. Chapter 2 presents a biophysically realistic neural network model in the midbrain to drive a muscle fiber oculomotor plant during horizontal monkey saccades. Neural circuitry, including omnipause neuron, premotor excitatory and inhibitory burst neurons, long lead burst neuron, tonic neuron, interneuron, abducens nucleus, and oculomotor nucleus, is developed to examine saccade dynamics. The time-optimal control mechanism demonstrates how the neural commands are encoded in the downstream saccadic pathway by realization of agonist and antagonist controller models. Consequently, each agonist muscle fiber is stimulated by an agonist neuron, while an antagonist muscle fiber is unstimulated by a pause and step from the antagonist neuron. It is concluded that the neural network is constrained by a minimum duration of the agonist pulse, and that the most dominant factor in determining the saccade magnitude is the number of active neurons for the small saccades. For the large saccades, however, the duration of agonist burst firing significantly affects the control of saccades. The proposed saccadic circuitry establishes a complete model of saccade generation since it not only includes the neural circuits at both the premotor and motor stages of the saccade generator, but it also uses a time-optimal controller to yield the desired saccade magnitude. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments / A New Linear Muscle Fiber Model for Neural Control of Saccades\footnotemark / A Physiological Neural Controller of a Muscle Fiber Oculomotor Plant in Horizontal Monkey Saccades\footnotemark / References / Authors' Biographies

Download or read book Understanding Atrial Fibrillation written by Luca Mainardi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents recent advances in signal processing techniques for modeling, analysis, and understanding of the heart's electrical activity during atrial fibrillation. This arrhythmia is the most commonly encountered in clinical practice and its complex and metamorphic nature represents a challenging problem for clinicians, engineers, and scientists. Research on atrial fibrillation has stimulated the development of a wide range of signal processing tools to better understand the mechanisms ruling its initiation, maintenance, and termination. This book provides undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers and practicing engineers, with an overview of techniques, including time domain techniques for atrial wave extraction, time-frequency analysis for exploring wave dynamics, and nonlinear techniques to characterize the ventricular response and the organization of atrial activity. The book includes an introductory chapter about atrial fibrillation and its mechanisms, treatment, and management. The successive chapters are dedicated to the analysis of atrial signals recorded on the body surface and to the quantification of ventricular response. The rest of the book explores techniques to characterize endo- and epicardial recordings and to model atrial conduction. Under the appearance of being a monothematic book on atrial fibrillation, the reader will not only recognize common problems of biomedical signal processing but also discover that analysis of atrial fibrillation is a unique challenge for developing and testing novel signal processing tools. Table of Contents: Analysis of Ventricular Response During Atrial Fibrillation / Organization Measures of Atrial Activity During Fibrillation / Modeling Atrial Fibrillation: From Myocardial Cells to ECG / Algorithms for Atrial Tachyarrythmia Detection for Long-Term Monitoring with Implantable Devices

Download or read book Computational Genomic Signatures written by Ozkan Ufuk Nalbantoglu and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent advances in development of sequencing technology has resulted in a deluge of genomic data. In order to make sense of this data, there is an urgent need for algorithms for data processing and quantitative reasoning. An emerging in silico approach, called computational genomic signatures, addresses this need by representing global species-specific features of genomes using simple mathematical models. This text introduces the general concept of computational genomic signatures, and it reviews some of the DNA sequence models which can be used as computational genomic signatures. The text takes the position that a practical computational genomic signature consists of both a model and a measure for computing the distance or similarity between models. Therefore, a discussion of sequence similarity/distance measurement in the context of computational genomic signatures is presented. The remainder of the text covers various applications of computational genomic signatures in the areas of metagenomics, phylogenetics and the detection of horizontal gene transfer. Table of Contents: Genome Signatures, Definition and Background / Other Computational Characterizations as Genome Signatures / Measuring Distance of Biological Sequences Using Genome Signatures / Applications: Phylogeny Construction / Applications: Metagenomics / Applications: Horizontal DNA Transfer Detection

Download or read book Ethics for Bioengineers written by Monique Frize and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-01 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly, biomedical scientists and engineers are involved in projects, design, or research and development that involve humans or animals. The book presents general concepts on professionalism and the regulation of the profession of engineering, including a discussion on what is ethics and moral conduct, ethical theories and the codes of ethics that are most relevant for engineers. An ethical decision-making process is suggested. Other issues such as conflicts of interest, plagiarism, intellectual property, confidentiality, privacy, fraud, and corruption are presented. General guidelines, the process for obtaining ethics approval from Ethics Review Boards, and the importance of obtaining informed consent from volunteers recruited for studies are presented. A discussion on research with animals is included. Ethical dilemmas focus on reproductive technologies, stem cells, cloning, genetic testing, and designer babies. The book includes a discussion on ethics and the technologies of body enhancement and of regeneration. The importance of assessing the impact of technology on people, society, and on our planet is stressed. Particular attention is given to nanotechnologies, the environment, and issues that pertain to developing countries. Ideas on gender, culture, and ethics focus on how research and access to medical services have, at times, been discriminatory towards women. The cultural aspects focus on organ transplantation in Japan, and a case study of an Aboriginal child in Canada; both examples show the impact that culture can have on how care is provided or accepted. The final section of the book discusses data collection and analysis and offers a guideline for honest reporting of results, avoiding fraud, or unethical approaches. The appendix presents a few case studies where fraud and/or unethical research have occurred. Table of Contents: Introduction to Ethics / Experiments with Human Subjects or Animals / Examples of Ethical Dilemmas in Biomedical Research / Technology and Society / Gender, Culture, and Ethics / Data Collection and Analysis

Download or read book Understanding Atrial Fibrillation the Signal Processing Contribution written by Luca Mainardi and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents recent advances in signal processing techniques for modeling, analysis, and understanding of the heart's electrical activity during atrial fibrillation. This arrhythmia is the most commonly encountered in clinical practice and its complex and metamorphic nature represents a challenging problem for clinicians, engineers, and scientists. Research on atrial fibrillation has stimulated the development of a wide range of signal processing tools to better understand the mechanisms ruling its initiation, maintenance, and termination. This book provides undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers and practicing engineers, with an overview of techniques, including time domain techniques for atrial wave extraction, time-frequency analysis for exploring wave dynamics, and nonlinear techniques to characterize the ventricular response and the organization of atrial activity. The book includes an introductory chapter about atrial fibrillation and its mechanisms, treatment, and management. The successive chapters are dedicated to the analysis of atrial signals recorded on the body surface and to the quantification of ventricular response. The rest of the book explores techniques to characterize endo- and epicardial recordings and to model atrial conduction. Under the appearance of being a monothematic book on atrial fibrillation, the reader will not only recognize common problems of biomedical signal processing but also discover that analysis of atrial fibrillation is a unique challenge for developing and testing novel signal processing tools.