Identification of ECG beats from cross-spectrum information aided learning vector quantization

This work describes the development of a computerized medical diagnostic tool for heart beat categorization. The main objective is to achieve an accurate, timely detection of cardiac arrhythmia for providing appropriate medical attention to a patient. The proposed scheme employs a feature extractor coupled with an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) classifier. The feature extractor is based on cross-correlation approach, utilizing the cross-spectral density information in frequency domain. The ANN classifier uses a Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) scheme which classifies the ECG beats into three categories: normal beats, Premature Ventricular Contraction (PVC) beats and other beats. To demonstrate the generalization capability of the scheme, this classifier is developed utilizing a small training dataset and then tested with a large testing dataset. Our proposed scheme was employed for 40 benchmark ECG files of the MIT/BIH database. The system could produce classification accuracy as high as 95.24% and could outperform several competing algorithms.