Machine Learning Approach for Diagnosis and Prognosis of Cardiac Arrhythmia Condition Using a Minimum Feature Set and Auto-Segmentation-Based Window Optimisation

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases have become extremely prevalent in the global population. Several accurate classification methods for arrhythmias have been proposed in the healthcare literature. However, extensive research is required to improve the prediction accuracy of various arrhythmia conditions. In this paper, discussion is focussed on two major objectives: optimisation of windows based on our proposed auto-segmentation method for the exact diagnosis of the heart condition within the segment and prediction of arrhythmia progression. For prediction, identification of features is vital. Identified efficient independent feature sets such as RR interval, peak-to-peak amplitude, and unique derived parameters such as coefficient of variation (CV) of RR interval and CV of peak-to-peak amplitude. The progression of arrhythmia includes the following steps such as data preprocessing, time and frequency domain feature extraction, and feature selection using principal component analysis. A hypertuned support vector machine is utilised for accurate diagnosis. Proposed two techniques to predict the progression of arrhythmias: the regression-based trend curve (RBTC) and the fuzzy enhanced Markov model (FEMM). We have effectively evaluated our prediction algorithms using offline Massachusetts Institute of Technology Physio Net database signals, using automatic segmentation with prediction accuracy of 98 %. In terms of accuracy, FEMM outperforms RBTC. Thus, an auto-segmentation algorithm was proposed to classify various arrhythmia signals using a minimal feature set and to predict future conditions using our proposed method, FEMM.