Multiple ECG segments denoising autoencoder model.

Abstract

Objectives: Denoising autoencoder (DAE) with a single hidden layer of neurons can recode a signal, i.e., converting the original signal into a noise-reduced signal. The DAE approach has shown a good performance in denoising bio-signals, like electrocardiograms (ECG). In this paper, we study the effect of correlated, uncorrelated and jittered datasets on the performance of the DAE model.

Methods: Vectors of multiple concatenated ECG segments of simultaneously recorded Einthoven recordings I, II, III are considered to establish the following dataset cases: (1) correlated, (2) uncorrelated, and (3) jittered. We consider our previous work in finding the optimal number of hidden neurons receiving the input signal with respect to signal quality and computational burden by applying Akaike's information criterion. To evaluate DAE, these datasets are corrupted with six types of noise, namely mix noise (MX), motion artifact noise (MA), electrode movement (EM), baseline wander (BW), Gaussian white noise (GWN) and high-frequency noise (HFN), to simulate real case scenario. Spectral analysis is used to study the effects of noise whose power spectrum may overlap with the power spectrum of the wanted signal on DAE performance.

Results: The simulation results show (a) that the number of hidden neurons to denoise multiple correlated ECG is much lower than for jittered signals, (b) QRS-complex based ECG alignment preferable, (c) noises with slightly overlapping power spectrum, like BW and HFN, can be easily removed with sufficient number of neurons, while the noise with completely overlapping spectrum, like GWN, requires a very low-dimensional and thus coarser reduction to recover the signal.

Conclusions: The performance of DAE model in terms of signal-to-noise ratio improvement and the required number of hidden neurons can be improved by utilizing the correlation among simultaneous Einthoven I, II, III records.