Convolutional neural network based automatic screening tool for cardiovascular diseases using different intervals of ECG signals

Abstract Background and Objective: Automatic screening tools can be applied to detect cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), which are the leading cause of death worldwide. As an effective and non-invasive method, electrocardiogram (ECG) based approaches are widely used to identify CVDs. Hence, this paper proposes a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to classify five CVDs using standard 12-lead ECG signals. Methods: The Physiobank (PTB) ECG database is used in this study. Firstly, ECG signals are segmented into different intervals (one-second, two-seconds and three-seconds), without any wave detection, and three datasets are obtained. Secondly, as an alternative to any complex preprocessing, durations of raw ECG signals have been considered as input with simple min-max normalization. Lastly, a ten-fold cross-validation method is employed for one-second ECG signals and also tested on other two datasets (two-seconds and three-seconds). Results: Comparing to the competing approaches, the proposed CNN acquires the highest performance, having an accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 99.59%, 99.04%, and 99.87%, respectively, with one-second ECG signals. The overall accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity obtained are 99.80%, 99.48%, and 99.93%, respectively, using two-seconds of signals with pre-trained proposed models. The accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of segmented ECG tested by three-seconds signals are 99.84%, 99.52%, and 99.95%, respectively. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that the proposed system accomplishes high performance and keeps the characterizations in brief with flexibility at the same time, which means that it has the potential for implementation in a practical, real-time medical environment.