A Novel Clustering-Based Algorithm for Continuous and Non-invasive Cuff-Less Blood Pressure Estimation

Extensive research has been performed on continuous, non-invasive, cuffless blood pressure (BP) measurement using artificial intelligence algorithms. This approach involves extracting certain features from physiological signals like ECG, PPG, ICG, BCG, etc. as independent variables and extracting features from Arterial Blood Pressure (ABP) signals as dependent variables, and then using machine learning algorithms to develop a blood pressure estimation model based on these data. The greatest challenge of this field is the insufficient accuracy of estimation models. This paper proposes a novel blood pressure estimation method with a clustering step for accuracy improvement. The proposed method involves extracting Pulse Transit Time (PTT), PPG Intensity Ratio (PIR), and Heart Rate (HR) features from Electrocardiogram (ECG) and Photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals as the inputs of clustering and regression, extracting Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) and Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) features from ABP signals as dependent variables, and finally developing regression models by applying Gradient Boosting Regression (GBR), Random Forest Regression (RFR), and Multilayer Perceptron Regression (MLP) on each cluster. The method was implemented using the MIMICII dataset with the silhouette criterion used to determine the optimal number of clusters. The results showed that because of the inconsistency, high dispersion, and multi-trend behavior of the extracted features vectors, the accuracy can be significantly improved by running a clustering algorithm and then developing a regression model on each cluster, and finally weighted averaging of the results based on the error of each cluster. When implemented with 5 clusters and GBR, this approach yielded an MAE of 2.56 for SBP estimates and 2.23 for DBP estimates, which were significantly better than the best results without clustering (DBP: 6.27, SBP: 6.36)

Real-Time Heart Arrhythmia Detection Using Apache Spark Structured Streaming

One of the major causes of death in the world is cardiac arrhythmias. In the field of healthcare, physicians use the patient’s electrocardiogram (ECG) records to detect arrhythmias, which indicate the electrical activity of the patient’s heart. The problem is that the symptoms do not always appear and the physician may be mistaken in the diagnosis. Therefore, patients need continuous monitoring through real-time ECG analysis to detect arrhythmias in a timely manner and prevent an eventual incident that threatens the patient’s life. In this research, we used the Structured Streaming module built top on the open-source Apache Spark platform for the first time to implement a machine learning pipeline for real-time cardiac arrhythmias detection and evaluate the impact of using this new module on classification performance metrics and the rate of delay in arrhythmia detection. The ECG data collected from the MIT/BIH database for the detection of three class labels: normal beats, RBBB, and atrial fibrillation arrhythmias. We also developed three decision trees, random forest, and logistic regression multiclass classifiers for data classification where the random forest classifier showed better performance in classification than the other two classifiers. The results show previous results in performance metrics of the classification model and a significant decrease in pipeline runtime by using more class labels compared to previous studies

An analysis of structural changes of customer segments by a hybrid method of clustering and association rule

Customer segmentation is one of the main and key issues in customer relationship management studies. One of the main challenges of customer segmentation is segments’ instability and changes over time. Segments’ changes can be categorized into two main categories including structural and content changes. The focus of this paper is on the structural change which is very important. To analyze the structural changes, a hybrid method of clustering and association rule mining techniques is presented and implemented on the data of a main service provider in telecommunication industry in Iran. Based on the results, the structural changes are categorized into cyclic changes and changes with trend which are discussed. The results show that a growing trend has been formed implying creation of a new segment in this corporation. The results provide the marketing managers with useful knowledge to make more effective marketing decisions