Systems and techniques are disclosed for determining the onset and offset of a ventricular fibrillation event and for distinguishing ventricular fibrillation from noise. An electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is obtained (122, 136)； a Hilbert transform is applied to the ECG signal to obtain an analytical pair, the analytical pair including the ECG signal and the transformed ECG signal； a speed-amplitude is determined from the analytical pair； and an onset (131) or offset (145) of a ventricular fibrillation event is identified based at least one of a value of a cost function of the speed-amplitude over a window and a quantity of occurrences the speed-amplitude crosses a threshold over the window.
