A method for identifying a target arrhythmia, for example, atrial fibrillation, with very high specificity includes obtaining heart rhythm data such as EKG data, selecting and analyzing a segment of the data for arrhythmia, if an arrhythmia is found then reanalyzing the segment of data for a hidden regularity that would indicate the data is not the target arrhythmia. If no hidden regularity is found, then identifying the segment as the target arrhythmia.