Electrocardiogram beat classification using deep convolutional neural network techniques

Abstract

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is a useful method which enables the monitoring of various cardiac conditions, such as arrhythmia and heart rate variability (HRV). ECG beats help to determine various heart failures such as cardiac disease and ventricular tachyarrhythmia. In the literature, it can be seen that various advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques and deep learning algorithms have been employed for ECG beat categorization. These methods were generally based on either the time domain or frequency domain. Time-frequency (T-F) based techniques have also been proposed for ECG beat classification. In this chapter, a different model is proposed for the ECG beat classification task. In the proposed approach, the ECG beats are initially represented by images. Instead of using a time-frequency approach for converting the ECG beats to ECG images, we opt to use the ECG beats directly to construct the ECG images. In other words, the ECG beat values are directly saved as ECG images. Three deep convolutional neural network (CNN) approaches are considered in ECG beat classification. These approaches ensure end-to-end learning schema, fine-tuning of pre-trained CNN models, extraction of deep features and their classification using a traditional classifier, such as the support vector machine (SVM) or deep machine learning approaches. The well-known MIT-BIH arrhythmia database is considered in the evaluation of the proposed deep learning approaches. The database is separated into two sets, the training and test dataset in proportions of 75% and 25%, respectively. The experimental results are evaluated using the classification accuracy score. The results show that the proposed methods have potential for use in ECG beat classification. © IOP Publishing Ltd 2020.