Event-based sampled ECG morphology reconstruction through self-similarity

Abstract

Background and objective: Event-based analog-to-digital converters allow for sparse bio-signal acquisition, enabling local sub-Nyquist sampling frequency. However, aggressive event selection can cause the loss of important bio-markers, not recoverable with standard interpolation techniques. In this work, we leverage the self-similarity of the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal to recover missing features in event-based sampled ECG signals, dynamically selecting patient-representative templates together with a novel dynamic time warping algorithm to infer the morphology of event-based sampled heartbeats.

Methods: We acquire a set of uniformly sampled heartbeats and use a graph-based clustering algorithm to define representative templates for the patient. Then, for each event-based sampled heartbeat, we select the morphologically nearest template, and we then reconstruct the heartbeat with piece-wise linear deformations of the selected template, according to a novel dynamic time warping algorithm that matches events to template segments.

Results: Synthetic tests on a standard normal sinus rhythm dataset, composed of approximately 1.8 million normal heartbeats, show a big leap in performance with respect to standard resampling techniques. In particular (when compared to classic linear resampling), we show an improvement in P-wave detection of up to 10 times, an improvement in T-wave detection of up to three times, and a 30% improvement in the dynamic time warping morphological distance.

Conclusion: In this work, we have developed an event-based processing pipeline that leverages signal self-similarity to reconstruct event-based sampled ECG signals. Synthetic tests show clear advantages over classical resampling techniques.

Keywords: Biosignal monitoring; Dynamic time warping; ECG; ECG morphology; Event-based; Morphology reconstruction; Non-uniform sampling.