This thesis would not have been possible without the support of a great number of people. Above all, I would like to thank my doctoral supervisor, Professor Lionel Tarassenko. I will always be grateful for his mentorship. His genius, knowledge and enterprise have been an inspiration to me, and the example he has provided will stick with me long past my time at Oxford. Special thanks are due to the postdocs, docs and predocs in the Biomedical Signal Processing group. In particular, I had a great slice of good fortune for sharing an office and ideas with