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In this paper, an effective electrocardiogram (ECG) recurrence plot (RP)-based arrhythmia classification algorithm that can be implemented in portable devices is presented. Public databases from PhysioNet were used to conduct this study including the MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation Database, the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, the MIT-BIH Malignant Ventricular Ectopy Database, and the Creighton University Ventricular Tachyarrhythmia Database. ECG time series were segmented and converted using an RP, and two-dimensional images were used as inputs to the CNN classifiers. In this study, two-stage classification is proposed to improve the accuracy. The ResNet-18 architecture was applied to detect ventricular fibrillation (VF) and noise during the first stage, whereas normal, atrial fibrillation, premature atrial contraction, and premature ventricular contractions were detected using ResNet-50 in the second stage. The method was evaluated using 5-fold cross-validation which improved the results when compared to previous studies, achieving first and second stage average accuracies of 97.21% and 98.36%, sensitivities of 96.49% and 97.92%, positive predictive values of 95.54% and 98.20%, and F1-scores of 95.96% and 98.05%, respectively. Furthermore, a 5-fold improvement in the memory requirement was achieved when compared with a previous study, making this classifier feasible for use in resource-constricted environments such as portable devices. Even though the method is successful, first stage training requires combining four different arrhythmia types into one label (other), which generates more data for the other category than for VF and noise, thus creating a data imbalance that affects the first stage performance.

This study evaluates cardiovascular and cerebral hemodynamics systems by only using non-invasive electrocardiography (ECG) signals. The Massachusetts General Hospital/Marquette Foundation (MGH/MF) and Cerebral Hemodynamic Autoregulatory Information System Database (CHARIS DB) from the PhysioNet database are used for cardiovascular and cerebral hemodynamics, respectively. For cardiovascular hemodynamics, the ECG is used for generating the arterial blood pressure (ABP), central venous pressure (CVP), and pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP). Meanwhile, for cerebral hemodynamics, the ECG is utilized for the intracranial pressure (ICP) generator. A deep convolutional autoencoder system is applied for this study. The cross-validation method with Pearson's linear correlation (R), root mean squared error (RMSE), and mean absolute error (MAE) are measured for the evaluations. Initially, the ECG is used to generate the cardiovascular waveform. For the ABP system-the systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressures (DBP)-the R evaluations are 0.894 ± 0.004 and 0.881 ± 0.005, respectively. The MAE evaluations for SBP and DBP are, respectively, 6.645 ± 0.353 mmHg and 3.210 ± 0.104 mmHg. Furthermore, for the PAP system-the systolic and diastolic pressures-the R evaluations are 0.864 ± 0.003 mmHg and 0.817 ± 0.006 mmHg, respectively. The MAE evaluations for systolic and diastolic pressures are, respectively, 3.847 ± 0.136 mmHg and 2.964 ± 0.181 mmHg. Meanwhile, the mean CVP evaluations are 0.916 ± 0.001, 2.220 ± 0.039 mmHg, and 1.329 ± 0.036 mmHg, respectively, for R, RMSE, and MAE. For the mean ICP evaluation in cerebral hemodynamics, the R and MAE evaluations are 0.914 ± 0.003 and 2.404 ± 0.043 mmHg, respectively. This study, as a proof of concept, concludes that the non-invasive cardiovascular and cerebral hemodynamics systems can be potentially investigated by only using the ECG signal.

Hypertension affects a huge number of people around the world. It also has a great contribution to cardiovascular- and renal-related diseases. This study investigates the ability of a deep convolutional autoencoder (DCAE) to generate continuous arterial blood pressure (ABP) by only utilizing photoplethysmography (PPG). A total of 18 patients are utilized. LeNet-5- and U-Net-based DCAEs, respectively abbreviated LDCAE and UDCAE, are compared to the MP60 IntelliVue Patient Monitor, as the gold standard. Moreover, in order to investigate the data generalization, the cross-validation (CV) method is conducted. The results show that the UDCAE provides superior results in producing the systolic blood pressure (SBP) estimation. Meanwhile, the LDCAE gives a slightly better result for the diastolic blood pressure (DBP) prediction. Finally, the genetic algorithm-based optimization deep convolutional autoencoder (GDCAE) is further administered to optimize the ensemble of the CV models. The results reveal that the GDCAE is superior to either the LDCAE or UDCAE. In conclusion, this study exhibits that systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) can also be accurately achieved by only utilizing a single PPG signal.

This study evaluates four databases from PhysioNet: The American Heart Association database (AHADB), Creighton University Ventricular Tachyarrhythmia database (CUDB), MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database (MITDB), and MIT-BIH Noise Stress Test database (NSTDB). The ANSI/AAMI EC57:2012 is used for the evaluation of the algorithms for the supraventricular ectopic beat (SVEB), ventricular ectopic beat (VEB), atrial fibrillation (AF), and ventricular fibrillation (VF) via the evaluation of the sensitivity, positive predictivity and false positive rate. Sample entropy, fast Fourier transform (FFT), and multilayer perceptron neural network with backpropagation training algorithm are selected for the integrated detection algorithms. For this study, the result for SVEB has some improvements compared to a previous study that also utilized ANSI/AAMI EC57. In further, VEB sensitivity and positive predictivity gross evaluations have greater than 80%, except for the positive predictivity of the NSTDB database. For AF gross evaluation of MITDB database, the results show very good classification, excluding the episode sensitivity. In advanced, for VF gross evaluation, the episode sensitivity and positive predictivity for the AHADB, MITDB, and CUDB, have greater than 80%, except for MITDB episode positive predictivity, which is 75%. The achieved results show that the proposed integrated SVEB, VEB, AF, and VF detection algorithm has an accurate classification according to ANSI/AAMI EC57:2012. In conclusion, the proposed integrated detection algorithm can achieve good accuracy in comparison with other previous studies. Furthermore, more advanced algorithms and hardware devices should be performed in future for arrhythmia detection and evaluation., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Good quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is the mainstay of treatment for managing patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Assessment of the quality of the CPR delivered is now possible through the electrocardiography (ECG) signal that can be collected by an automated external defibrillator (AED). This study evaluates a nonlinear approximation of the CPR given to the asystole patients. The raw ECG signal is filtered using ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), and the CPR-related intrinsic mode functions (IMF) are chosen to be evaluated. In addition, sample entropy (SE), complexity index (CI), and detrended fluctuation algorithm (DFA) are collated and statistical analysis is performed using ANOVA. The primary outcome measure assessed is the patient survival rate after two hours. CPR pattern of 951 asystole patients was analyzed for quality of CPR delivered. There was no significant difference observed in the CPR-related IMFs peak-to-peak interval analysis for patients who are younger or older than 60 years of age, similarly to the amplitude difference evaluation for SE and DFA. However, there is a difference noted for the CI (p < 0.05). The results show that patients group younger than 60 years have higher survival rate with high complexity of the CPR-IMFs amplitude differences.