A patient adapting heartbeat classifier using ECG morphology and heart-beat interval features

Abstract

An adaptive system for the automatic processing of the electrocardiogram (ECG) for the classification of heartbeats into one of the five beat classes recommended by ANSI/AAMI EC57:1998 standard is presented. The heartbeat classification system processes an incoming recording with a global-classifier to produce the first set of beat annotations. An expert then validates and if necessary corrects a fraction of the beats of the recording. The system then adapts by first training a local-classifier using the newly annotated beats and combines this with the global-classifier to produce an adapted classification system. The adapted system is then used to update beat annotations. The results of this study show that the performance of a patient adaptable classifier increases with the amount of training of the system on the local record. Crucially, the performance of the system can be significantly boosted with a small amount of adaptation even when all beats used for adaptation are from a single class. This study illustrates the ability to provide highly beneficial automatic arrhythmia monitoring and is an improvement on previously reported results for automated heartbeat classification systems.