ECG Analysis and Heartbeat Classification Based on Shallow Neural Networks

Accurate detection of cardiac pathological events is an important part of electrocardiogram (ECG) evaluation and subsequent correct treatment of the patient. For this purpose, several adaptive filter structures were proposed during the past decades for noise cancellation and arrhythmia detection. Currently there are a lot of devices on the market that analyze ECGs, such as patient monitors, stress test systems, and Holter analysis systems, that are able to detect beats and classify arrhythmia. This paper proposes a system for ECG analysis and heartbeat classification. The proposed solution relies on a combination of machine learning algorithm and a wavelet transformation in order to maximize its performance with the minimum possible training phase. Experimental results with public available data for arrhythmia indicate the efficiency in classifying heartbeats, whereas its low-computational and memory requirements makes it suitable for being implemented as part of an embedded (IoT) system.