Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

S. B. Jain Institute of Technology, Management and Research, Nagpur

Department of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering

Certificate
This is to certify that the synopsis entitled Classification of ECG signals using Probabilistic
Artificial Neural Network is successfully submitted by Akshay S. Thaware, Sumit M. Pali,
Prateek A. Madne, Gaurav D. Upadhyay under the guidance of Prof. Pravin Kshirsagar to
Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur as a part of eight semester project for
the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of degree of Bachelor of Engineering for
the session 2016-2017.

Prof.Pravin R. Kshirsagar

Prof. Pankaj S. Taklikar / Prof. M.W.Khanooni

Prof. Salim A.Chavan

Project Guide

Project In- Charges

Head of Department

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Abstract:
The classification of the electrocardiogram (ECG) can benefit in diagnosing most of the heart
diseases. The ECG provides almost all information about electrical activity of the heart. One
cardiac cycle in an ECG signal consist of the P-QRS-T waves and segments. The ECG signal
classification system gives overall idea about the diseases. An accurate ECG classification is a
challenging problem. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have become very popular and most
widely used for ECG classification. This project implements a simulation tool on MATLAB
platform to detect abnormalities in the ECG signal. The pre-processing of ECG signal is
performed with help of Wavelet toolbox of MATLAB Software. During the last fifteen years
the Wavelet transform has proven to be a valuable tool in many applications area of nonstationary signals such as biomedical signals and ECG particularly. Advantage of using
wavelet transform is that it divides the characteristics of ECG into different scales with
various resolutions.

Keywords: Electrocardiogram, MATLAB, Wavelet toolbox, Artificial neural networks

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Introduction:

An electrocardiogram (ECG) is a bioelectrical signal which records the heart's electrical activity
versus time. It is an important diagnostic tool for assessing heart functions. Electrocardiogram
represents electrical activity of the Heart. ECG signals is use for the diagnosis of various
abnormalities of patients, where ECG can give a lot of information regarding the abnormality in
the concerned patient. ECGs are analyzed by the physicians and interpreted depending upon their
knowledge. The understanding may vary by physician to medical doctor. The electrocardiogram
is an important tool for providing information about functional status of the heart. Analysis of
ECG is of great importance in the detection of cardiac diseases which are the main cause of
mortality in many countries. If the ECG signals are clean and high fidelity then the health
information can be understood properly. Thus, classification of arrhythmia is critical in clinical
cardiology, especially for the treatment of patients in the intensive care unit. ECG classification
includes steps namely preprocessing, feature extraction, feature normalization, and classification.
Applications of ECG signal classification are in detecting abnormality type and diagnosing a
new patient more precisely than manually. A neural network is type of connected system in
which various neurons are connected to each other. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) have
often been proposed as tool for realizing incomplete input patterns.

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Motivation/Problem statement:
Cardiovascular diseases are one of the most common causes of death. A patient
normally suspected of cardiac disorder undergoes the test of the electrical activity of the
heart.ECG beat recognition can be done by Artificial Neural Network (ANN). If the ECG signals
are clean and high fidelity then the health information can be understood properly.
Noise detection in the ECG signal is the crucial issue in the medical field .For
accurate measurement of ECG signal noise reduction is very important. Lack of standardization
of ECG features.

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Literature Survey:
Maedeh Kiani Sarkaleh and Asadollah Shahbahrami. This paper discuss the Recognition of
cardiac arrhythmias is important for diagnosis of cardiac abnormalies. Several algorithms have
been proposed to classify ECG arrhythmias; however, they cannot perform very well. Therefore,
in this paper, an expert system for Electrocardiogram(ECG) arrhythmia classification is
proposed. Discrete wavelet transform is used for processing ECG recordings, and extracting
some features, and neural network performs the classification task. Two types of arrhythmias can
be detected by the proposed system. Some recordings of the MIT-BIH arrhythmias database have
been used for training and testing our neural network based classifier. The simulation results
show that the classification accuracy of our algorithm is 96.5% using 10 files including normal.
[1]
Mansi Varshney, Chinmay Chandrakar, Dr. (Mrs.) Monisha Sharma. This paper discusses
various techniques earlier proposed in literature for extracting feature from an ECG signal. In
addition this paper show the comparative study of method which is used to check the accuracy of
overall system. The proposed schemes were mostly based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN),
and Morphological descriptor time-frequency distribution (MD-TFD) and other Signal Analysis
techniques. All these techniques and algorithms have their advantages and limitations. [2]
Jaylaxmi C Mannurmath , Prof. Raveendra. In this paper the discussion is about
electrocardiogram (ECG), a bioelectrical signal which records the heart's electrical activity
versus time. It is an important diagnostic tool for assessing heart functions. ECG arrhythmia can
be defined as any of a group of conditions in which the electrical activity of the heart is irregular
and can cause heartbeat to be slow or fast. As ECG signal being non stationary signal, the
arrhythmia may occur at random in the time-scale, which means, the arrhythmia symptoms may
not show up all the time but would manifest at certain irregular intervals during the day. Thus,
classification of arrhythmia is critical in clinical cardiology, especially for the treatment of
patients in the intensive care unit. This project implements a simulation tool on MATLAB
platform to detect abnormalities in the ECG signal. The ECG signal is downloaded from MITBIH Arrhythmia database, since this signal contains some noise and artifacts hence preprocessing of ECG signal are performed first. The pre-processing of ECG signal is performed
with help of Wavelet toolbox wherein baseline wandering, denoising and removal of high
frequency and low frequency is performed to improve SNR ratio of ECG signal. The Wavelet
toolbox is also used for feature extraction of ECG signal. Classification of arrhythmia is based on
basic classification rules. The complete project is implemented on MATLAB platform. The
performance of the algorithm is evaluated on MITBIH Database. The different types of

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

arrhythmia classes including normal beat, Tachycardia, Bradycardia and Myocardial Infract (MI)
are classified. [3]

R. Kavitha, T Christopher .The abnormal condition of the electrical activity in the heart is using
electrocardiogram shows a threat to human beings. It is a representative signal containing
information about the condition of the heart. The P-QRS-T wave shape, size and their time
intervals between its various peaks contain useful information about the nature of disease
affecting the heart. This paper presents a technique to examine electrocardiogram (ECG) signal,
by taking the features form the heart beats classification. ECG Signals are collected from MITBIH database. The heart rate is used as the base signal from which certain parameters are
extracted and presented to the network for classification. This survey provides a comprehensive
overview for the classification of heart rate. [4]

Pratiksha Sarma, S. R. Nirmala, Kandarpa Kumar Sarma. Heart diseases are frequent reasons of
death. Hence, there is always a need to develop systems that can provide prior indication about
the state of the heart. This is also required because medical facilities may not be uniform
everywhere. In such situation certain innovative approaches using certain signal processing
techniques can provide considerable support. Several algorithms have been proposed to classify
cardiac arrhythmias in the literature; however, many of them fail to perform optimally. Here, we
have proposed a method for ECG arrhythmia classification using Artificial Neural Network
(ANN). Fast Fourier Transform is used for pre-processing the ECG recordings. Linear Prediction
Coefficients (LPC) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) are used for extracting some
features and then Multi-Layer Perceptron ANN performs the classification. [5]

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Methodology:
In this study we are using Fuzzy Probabilistic Neural Networks as an automatic technique for
ECG signal analysis. As every real signal recorded by the equipment can have different artifacts,
we need to do some preprocessing steps before feeding it to our system. Wavelet transform is
used for extracting the morphological parameters of the ECG signal. Each data can belong in
more than one cluster of diseases,
Hence Neural Network is not able to diagnose the uncertainty on ECG's data and classifies them
in quanta forms which is far from the nature of data, we will use fuzzy algorithm which is
consisted of more trustable inputs to neural networks.

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Fig. 1: System block diagram

The ECG feature extraction plays a very important role in disease diagnosis. The amplitudes
and interval values of P-QRS-T waves determine the functionality of the heart of every human.
An accurate diagnosis of arrhythmia will be possible by the precise detection of P, QRS and T
waves. The waves are studied by some parameters of amplitude and time. In this work we will
use the wavelet transform technique. The wavelet transform is a transformation between time
and frequency domains.
One of the more important steps in ECG signals processing is denoising. The presence of
noise in all electrical elements causes the Instrumentation noise. The electrode probes, cables and
amplifier are the primary elements for ECG.

Fig.2:Morphology of ECG signals

(IJAREEIE www.ijareeie.com)

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

Plan of Project work:

The complete schedule plan for proposed project work is as mentioned below.
Sr.
No.

Semester

Activity

Duration

VII

To collect raw ECG signals

1 Month

VII

Literature Survey

1 Month

VII

Synopsis Writing

1 Month

VII

Learning the MATLAB programming and algorithm

1 Month

VIII

Preprocessing of ECG Signals

1 Month

VIII

Feature Extraction and Classification process

2 Months

VIII

Thesis

1 Month

1
2

3
4
5

6
7

References:
9

Classification of ECG signals using Artificial Neural Network

[1] Maedeh Kiani Sarkaleh and Asadollah Shahbahrami CLASSIFICATION OF ECG

ARRHYTHMIAS USING DISCRETE WAVELET TRANSFORM AND NEURAL
NETWORKS International Journal of Computer Science, Engineering and Applications
(IJCSEA) Vol.2, No.1, February 2012
[2] Mansi Varshney, Chinmay Chandrakar , Dr.(Mrs.)Monisha Sharma A Survey on Feature
Extraction and Classification of ECG Signal International Journal of Advanced Research in
Electrical, Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering. Vol. 3, Issue 1, January 2014
[3] Jaylaxmi C Mannurmath, Prof. RaveendraMATLAB Based ECG Signal Classification
International Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology Research (IJSETR), Volume 3,
Issue 7, July 2014
[4] R. Kavitha, T Christopher A Study on ECG Signal Classification Techniques International
Journal of Computer Applications (0975 8887) Volume 86 No 14, January 2014
[5] Pratiksha Sarma , S. R. Nirmala , Kandarpa Kumar Sarma Classification of ECG using
Some Novel Features ICETACS 2013
[6] P.de Chazal, M. O'Dwyer, and R. B. Reilly, "Automatic Classification of Heartbeats Using
ECG Morphology and Heartbeat Interval Features," IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Engineering,
Vol. 51, No. 7, pp.1196-1206, July 2004.
[7] Y. H. Hu, W. J. Tompkins, J. L. Urrusti and V. X. Afonso,( 1994) Applications of artificial
neural networks for ECG signal detection and classification, The Journal of Electrocardiology,
vol. 26, pp.66-73.
[8] K .O. Gupta and Dr. P. N. Chatur, ECG Signal Analysis and Classification using Data
Mining and Artificial Neural Networks International Journal of Emerging Technology
Advanced Engineering, ISSN:2250-2459, Vol. 2, Issue 1 January, 2012
[9] Ceylan,R, OzbayComparison of FCM, PCA and WT techniques for classification ECG
arrhythmia using artificial neural network, 2007
[10] H. G. Hosseini , K. J. Reynolds, D. Powers, A Multi-Stage Neural Network Classifier For
ECG Events, 23rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and
Biology Society, October 25-28, 2001.

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