De Giovanni, ElisabettaAminifar, AmirLuca, AdrianYazdani, SasanVesin, Jean-MarcAtienza Alonso, David2017-08-312017-08-31201710.22489/CinC.2017.285-191https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/139920In spite of the progress in management of Atrial Fibrillation (AF), this arrhythmia is one of the major causes of stroke and heart failure. The progression of this pathology from a silent paroxysmal form (PAF) into a sustained AF can be prevented by predicting the onset of PAF episodes. Moreover, since AF is caused by heterogeneous mechanisms in different patients, as we demonstrate in this paper, a patient-specific approach offers a promising solution. In this work, we consider two ECG recordings, one close to PAF onset and one far away from any PAF episode. For each patient, we extract two 5-minute ECG segments approximately 20 minutes apart. Next, we train a linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier using patient-specific sets of time- and amplitude-domain features. In particular, we consider the P-waves and the QRS complexes in short windows of 5 consecutive heart beats. Finally, we validate the method on the PAF Prediction Challenge (2001) PhysioNet database predicting the onset with an F1 score of 97.1\%, sensitivity of 96.2\% and specificity of 98.1\%.text::conference output::conference proceedings::conference paper