Search

This study aimed to investigate the application of label propagation techniques to propagate labels among photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals, particularly in imbalanced class scenarios and limited data availability scenarios, where clean PPG samples are significantly outnumbered by artifact-contaminated samples. We investigated a dataset comprising PPG recordings from 1571 patients, wherein approximately 82% of the samples were identified as clean, while the remaining 18% were contaminated by artifacts. Our research compares the performance of supervised classifiers, such as conventional classifiers and neural networks (Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Transformers, Fully Convolutional Network (FCN)), with the semi-supervised Label Propagation (LP) algorithm for artifact classification in PPG signals. The results indicate that the LP algorithm achieves a precision of 91%, a recall of 90%, and an F1 score of 90% for the ‘‘artifacts’’ class, showcasing its effectiveness in annotating a medical dataset, even in cases where clean samples are rare. Although the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) supervised model demonstrated good results with a precision of 89%, a recall of 95%, and an F1 score of 92%, the semi-supervised algorithm excels in artifact detection. In the case of imbalanced and limited pediatric intensive care environment data, the semi-supervised LP algorithm is promising for artifact detection in PPG signals. The results of this study are important for improving the accuracy of PPG-based health monitoring, particularly in situations in which motion artifacts pose challenges to data interpretation.

In children, vital distress events, particularly respiratory, go unrecognized. To develop a standard model for automated assessment of vital distress in children, we aimed to construct a prospective high-quality video database for critically ill children in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) setting. The videos were acquired automatically through a secure web application with an application programming interface (API). The purpose of this article is to describe the data acquisition process from each PICU room to the research electronic database. Using an Azure Kinect DK and a Flir Lepton 3.5 LWIR attached to a Jetson Xavier NX board and the network architecture of our PICU, we have implemented an ongoing high-fidelity prospectively collected video database for research, monitoring, and diagnostic purposes. This infrastructure offers the opportunity to develop algorithms (including computational models) to quantify vital distress in order to evaluate vital distress events. More than 290 RGB, thermographic, and point cloud videos of each 30 s have been recorded in the database. Each recording is linked to the patient’s numerical phenotype, i.e., the electronic medical health record and high-resolution medical database of our research center. The ultimate goal is to develop and validate algorithms to detect vital distress in real time, both for inpatient care and outpatient management. Keywords: clinical decision support system