International Journal of Informatics and Communication Technology (IJ-ICT)
Vol 15, No 4: December 2026

Classification of cardiac ECG signals using quadratic discriminant analysis for atrial fibrillation

Wameedh Raad Fathel (General Directorate of Education)
Marwah Nabeel Ibrahim Al-Siraj (Northern Technical University)
Maysaloon Abed Qasim (Unknown)
Marwa Mawfaq Mohamedsheet Al-Hatab (Northern Technical University)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Dec 2026

Abstract

Accurate and timely detection of atrial fibrillation (AF) is a crucial issue in avoiding the risk of serious cardiovascular complications such as stroke and heart failure. This study proposed a machine learning-based system used for automated electrocardiogram (ECG) signal classification using features derived from spectral and temporal analyses. The study used a dataset obtained from the PhysioNet 2017 challenge database with 5000 samples labeled as normal rhythm (N), AF, and noisy rhythm (NR). Five primary features: average spectral energy, variation in spectral power, root mean square fluctuation, overall signal energy, and power variance were extracted, expressing both amplitude and frequency-domain characteristics of cardiac dynamics. 10-fold stratified cross-validation approach was used to evaluate the performance of the model using multiple classifiers, which are: quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), K-nearest neighbors (KNN), and multi-layer perceptron (MLP). Additionally, to improve model stability and accuracy, a soft voting-based ensemble model was developed. Although RF achieved the highest accuracy (94.15%), the ensemble model (93.21%) outperformed QDA and SVM. The ensemble approach achieved sensitivities ranging from 0.89 to 0.96 and specificities between 0.95 and 0.97 across all rhythm categories, demonstrating strong generalization.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

IJICT

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT

Description

International Journal of Informatics and Communication Technology (IJ-ICT) is a common platform for publishing quality research paper as well as other intellectual outputs. This Journal is published by Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science (IAES) whose aims is to promote the dissemination of ...