Learning Better Clinical Risk Models.

Risk models are used to estimate a patient’s risk of suffering particular outcomes throughout clinical practice. These models are important for matching patients to the appropriate level of treatment, for effective allocation of resources, and for fairly evaluating the performance of healthcare providers. The application and development of methods from the field of machine learning has the potential to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare spending with more accurate estimates of patient risk. This dissertation addresses several limitations of currently used clinical risk models, through the identification of novel risk factors and through the training of more effective models. As wearable monitors become more effective and less costly, the previously untapped predictive information in a patient’s physiology over time has the potential to greatly improve clinical practice. However translating these technological advances into real-world clinical impacts will require computational methods to identify high-risk structure in the data. This dissertation presents several approaches to learning risk factors from physiological recordings, through the discovery of latent states using topic models, and through the identification of predictive features using convolutional neural networks. We evaluate these approaches on patients from a large clinical trial and find that these methods not only outperform prior approaches to leveraging heart rate for cardiac risk stratification, but that they improve overall prediction of cardiac death when considered alongside standard clinical risk factors. We also demonstrate the utility of this work for learning a richer description of sleep recordings. Additionally, we consider the development of risk models in the presence of missing data, which is ubiquitous in real-world medical settings. We present a novel method for jointly learning risk and imputation models in the presence of missing data, and find significant improvements relative to standard approaches when evaluated on a large national registry of trauma patients.PhDComputer Science and EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113326/1/alexve_1.pd

Compelling new electrocardiographic markers for automatic diagnosis

Producción CientíficaBackground and Objective: The automatic diagnosis of heart diseases from the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is crucial in clinical decision-making. However, the use of computer-based decision rules in clinical practice is still deficient, mainly due to their complexity and a lack of medical interpretation. The objetive of this research is to address these issues by providing valuable diagnostic rules that can be easily implemented in clinical practice. In this research, efficient diagnostic rules friendly in clinical practice are provided. Methods: In this paper, interesting parameters obtained from the ECG signals analysis are presented and two simple rules for automatic diagnosis of Bundle Branch Blocks are defined using new markers derived from the so-called FMM delineator. The main advantages of these markers are the good statistical properties and their clear interpretation in clinically meaningful terms. Results: High sensitivity and specificity values have been obtained using the proposed rules with data from more than 35000 patients from well known benchmarking databases. In particular, to identify Complete Left Bundle Branch Blocks and differentiate this condition from subjects without heart diseases, sensitivity and specificity values ranging from 93% to 99% and from 96% to 99%, respectively. The new markers and the automatic diagnosis are easily available at https://fmmmodel.shinyapps.io/fmmEcg/, an app specifically developed for any given ECG signal. Conclusions: The proposal is different from others in the literature and it is compelling for three main reasons. On the one hand, the markers have a concise electrocardiographic interpretation. On the other hand, the diagnosis rules have a very high accuracy. Finally, the markers can be provided by any device that registers the ECG signal and the automatic diagnosis is made straightforwardly, in contrast to the black-box and deep learning algorithms.Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (grant PID2019-106363RB-I00

A Framework for Evaluation and Identication of Time Series Models for Multi-Step Ahead Prediction of Physiological Signals

Significant interest exists in the potential to use continuous physiological monitoring to prevent respiratory complications and death, especially in the postoperative period. Smart alarm-threshold based systems are currently used with hospitalized patients. Despite clinical observations and research studies to support benefit from these systems, several concerns remain. For example, a small difference in a threshold may significantly increase the alarm rate. A significant increase in alarm related adverse outcomes has been reported by health care oversight organizations. Also, it has been recently shown that the signaled alarms are indeed late detections for clinical instability leading to a delayed recognition and less successful clinical intervention. This dissertation advances the state of art by moving from just monitoring towards prediction of physiological variables. Moving in this direction introduces research challenges in many aspects. Although existing literature describes many metrics for characterizing the prediction performance of time series models, these metrics may not be relevant for physiological signals. In these signals, clinicians are often concerned about specific regions of clinical interest. This dissertation develops and implements different types of metrics that can characterize the performance in predicting clinically relevant regions in physiological signals. In the era of massive data, biomedical devices are able to collect a large number of synchronized physiological signals recording a significant time history of a patient's physiological state. Directionality between physiological signals and which ones can be used to improve the ability to predict the other ones is an important research question. This dissertation uses a dynamic systems perspective to address this question. Metrics are also defined to characterize the improvement achieved by incorporating additional data into the prediction model of a physiological signal of interest. Although a rich literature exists on time series prediction models, these models traditionally consider the (absolute or square) error between the predicted and actual time series as an objective for optimization. This dissertation proposes two modeling frameworks for predicting clinical regions of interest in physiological signals. The physiological definition of the clinically relevant regions is incorporated in the model development and used to optimize models with respect to predictions of these regions.PhDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116666/1/elmoaqet_1.pd

Automated myocardial infarction diagnosis from ECG

In the present dissertation, an automated neural network-based ECG diagnosing system was designed to detect the presence of myocardial infarction based on the hypothesis that an artificial neural network-based ECG interpretation system may improve the clinical myocardial infarction. 137 patients were included. Among them 122 had myocardial infarction, but the remaining 15 were normal. The sensitivity and the specificity of present system were 92.2% and 50.7% respectively. The sensitivity was consistent with relevant research. The relatively low specificity results from the rippling of the low pass filtering. We can conclude that neural network-based system is a promising aid for the myocardial infarction diagnosis

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/

Does Transitioning to an OMI/NOMI Model for the Evaluation of Acute Coronary Syndrome in Adult Emergency Department Patients Improve Outcomes Compared to Contemporary STEMI/NSTEMI Model?

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) continues to be the most common cause of death in the United States, and nearly every 34 seconds one American has a coronary event. Based on 12- lead electrocardiogram (ECG) findings myocardial infarction (MI) patients are treated, according to guidelines, emergently with reperfusion therapy if presenting with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), versus delayed revascularization if presenting with non-ST elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI). However, the evidence shows there is a lack of recognition of which patients require immediate catherization utilizing the current guidelines. In recent years, approximately 70% of acute MI (AMI) patients are classified as NSTEMI. Furthermore, it has been observed that approximately 30% of NSTEMI patients have total occluded coronary arteries (TOCA) on angiography yet face a delayed intervention approach that contributes to worsened clinical outcomes. The current STEMI/NSTEMI paradigm lacks the accuracy in triaging patients who have a suspected acute coronary occlusion (ACO) or near occlusion, with insufficient collateral circulation, whose myocardium is at imminent risk of irreversible infarction without immediate reperfusion. A more recent emerging paradigm to determine who warrants immediate reperfusion is ACO-MI/Non-ACO-MI or Occlusion Myocardial Infarction (OMI) versus Non- Occlusion Myocardial Infarction (NOMI) for short. To answer whether the OMI/NOMI paradigm was superior to STEMI/NSTEMI in evaluating ACS patients, a literature review was conducted primarily utilizing the database PubMed, and certain full-text articles were obtained through Augsburg University’s interlibrary loan system. Overall, literature shows limitations of the current STEMI/NSTEMI paradigm and shows that OMI/NOMI paradigm has superior diagnostic accuracy and earlier recognition abilities for treating patients that present with ACS

A Survey Study of the Current Challenges and Opportunities of Deploying the ECG Biometric Authentication Method in IoT and 5G Environments

The environment prototype of the Internet of Things (IoT) has opened the horizon for researchers to utilize such environments in deploying useful new techniques and methods in different fields and areas. The deployment process takes place when numerous IoT devices are utilized in the implementation phase for new techniques and methods. With the wide use of IoT devices in our daily lives in many fields, personal identification is becoming increasingly important for our society. This survey aims to demonstrate various aspects related to the implementation of biometric authentication in healthcare monitoring systems based on acquiring vital ECG signals via designated wearable devices that are compatible with 5G technology. The nature of ECG signals and current ongoing research related to ECG authentication are investigated in this survey along with the factors that may affect the signal acquisition process. In addition, the survey addresses the psycho-physiological factors that pose a challenge to the usage of ECG signals as a biometric trait in biometric authentication systems along with other challenges that must be addressed and resolved in any future related research.