Algorithms for automated diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases based on ECG data: A comprehensive systematic review

The prevalence of cardiovascular diseases is increasing around the world. However, the technology is evolving and can be monitored with low-cost sensors anywhere at any time. This subject is being researched, and different methods can automatically identify these diseases, helping patients and healthcare professionals with the treatments. This paper presents a systematic review of disease identification, classification, and recognition with ECG sensors. The review was focused on studies published between 2017 and 2022 in different scientific databases, including PubMed Central, Springer, Elsevier, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), IEEE Xplore, and Frontiers. It results in the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 103 scientific papers. The study demonstrated that different datasets are available online with data related to various diseases. Several ML/DP-based models were identified in the research, where Convolutional Neural Network and Support Vector Machine were the most applied algorithms. This review can allow us to identify the techniques that can be used in a system that promotes the patient’s autonomy.N/

A lightweight QRS detector for single lead ECG signals using a max-min difference algorithm

Background and objectives - Detection of the R-peak pertaining to the QRS complex of an ECG signal plays an important role for the diagnosis of a patient's heart condition. To accurately identify the QRS locations from the acquired raw ECG signals, we need to handle a number of challenges, which include noise, baseline wander, varying peak amplitudes, and signal abnormality. This research aims to address these challenges by developing an efficient lightweight algorithm for QRS (i.e., R-peak) detection from raw ECG signals. Methods - A lightweight real-time sliding window-based Max-Min Difference (MMD) algorithm for QRS detection from Lead II ECG signals is proposed. Targeting to achieve the best trade-off between computational efficiency and detection accuracy, the proposed algorithm consists of five key steps for QRS detection, namely, baseline correction, MMD curve generation, dynamic threshold computation, R-peak detection, and error correction. Five annotated databases from Physionet are used for evaluating the proposed algorithm in R-peak detection. Integrated with a feature extraction technique and a neural network classifier, the proposed ORS detection algorithm has also been extended to undertake normal and abnormal heartbeat detection from ECG signals. Results - The proposed algorithm exhibits a high degree of robustness in QRS detection and achieves an average sensitivity of 99.62% and an average positive predictivity of 99.67%. Its performance compares favorably with those from the existing state-of-the-art models reported in the literature. In regards to normal and abnormal heartbeat detection, the proposed QRS detection algorithm in combination with the feature extraction technique and neural network classifier achieves an overall accuracy rate of 93.44% based on an empirical evaluation using the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia data set with 10-fold cross validation. Conclusions - In comparison with other related studies, the proposed algorithm offers a lightweight adaptive alternative for R-peak detection with good computational efficiency. The empirical results indicate that it not only yields a high accuracy rate in QRS detection, but also exhibits efficient computational complexity at the order of O(n), where n is the length of an ECG signal

A comparison of statistical machine learning methods in heartbeat detection and classification

In health care, patients with heart problems require quick responsiveness in a clinical setting or in the operating theatre. Towards that end, automated classification of heartbeats is vital as some heartbeat irregularities are time consuming to detect. Therefore, analysis of electro-cardiogram (ECG) signals is an active area of research. The methods proposed in the literature depend on the structure of a heartbeat cycle. In this paper, we use interval and amplitude based features together with a few samples from the ECG signal as a feature vector. We studied a variety of classification algorithms focused especially on a type of arrhythmia known as the ventricular ectopic fibrillation (VEB). We compare the performance of the classifiers against algorithms proposed in the literature and make recommendations regarding features, sampling rate, and choice of the classifier to apply in a real-time clinical setting. The extensive study is based on the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. Our main contribution is the evaluation of existing classifiers over a range sampling rates, recommendation of a detection methodology to employ in a practical setting, and extend the notion of a mixture of experts to a larger class of algorithms

Role of independent component analysis in intelligent ECG signal processing

The Electrocardiogram (ECG) reflects the activities and the attributes of the human heart and reveals very important hidden information in its structure. The information is extracted by means of ECG signal analysis to gain insights that are very crucial in explaining and identifying various pathological conditions. The feature extraction process can be accomplished directly by an expert through, visual inspection of ECGs printed on paper or displayed on a screen. However, the complexity and the time taken for the ECG signals to be visually inspected and manually analysed means that it‟s a very tedious task thus yielding limited descriptions. In addition, a manual ECG analysis is always prone to errors: human oversights. Moreover ECG signal processing has become a prevalent and effective tool for research and clinical practices. A typical computer based ECG analysis system includes a signal preprocessing, beats detection and feature extraction stages, followed by classification.Automatic identification of arrhythmias from the ECG is one important biomedical application of pattern recognition. This thesis focuses on ECG signal processing using Independent Component Analysis (ICA), which has received increasing attention as a signal conditioning and feature extraction technique for biomedical application. Long term ECG monitoring is often required to reliably identify the arrhythmia. Motion induced artefacts are particularly common in ambulatory and Holter recordings, which are difficult to remove with conventional filters due to their similarity to the shape of ectopic xiiibeats. Feature selection has always been an important step towards more accurate, reliable and speedy pattern recognition. Better feature spaces are also sought after in ECG pattern recognition applications. Two new algorithms are proposed, developed and validated in this thesis, one for removing non-trivial noises in ECGs using the ICA and the other deploys the ICA extracted features to improve recognition of arrhythmias. Firstly, independent component analysis has been studiedand found effective in this PhD project to separate out motion induced artefacts in ECGs, the independent component corresponding to noise is then removed from the ECG according to kurtosis and correlation measurement.The second algorithm has been developed for ECG feature extraction, in which the independent component analysis has been used to obtain a set of features, or basis functions of the ECG signals generated hypothetically by different parts of the heart during the normal and arrhythmic cardiac cycle. ECGs are then classified based on the basis functions along with other time domain features. The selection of the appropriate feature set for classifier has been found important for better performance and quicker response. Artificial neural networks based pattern recognition engines are used to perform final classification to measure the performance of ICA extracted features and effectiveness of the ICA based artefacts reduction algorithm.The motion artefacts are effectively removed from the ECG signal which is shown by beat detection on noisy and cleaned ECG signals after ICA processing. Using the ICA extracted feature sets classification of ECG arrhythmia into eight classes with fewer independent components and very high classification accuracy is achieved