Classification of biophysical changes during food allergy challenges

This paper details the process of oral food challenges (‘allergy tests’) and steps followed to investigate whether automatic classification of the tests is possible. It has been observed by trained staff that the mood and physiological signals of a subject being tested for allergies can change during the test if they are sensitive to the allergen they are being tested against. Data from thirteen subjects was recorded, and thirteen features were extracted from each of these datasets. The changes in the features were then analysed over the course of each test. It was noted that when a subject failed the challenge, some of the features extracted from the ECG trace changed suddenly near the time that the test was stopped. Threshold classification was employed, and ROC curves were generated. Some features gave rise to ROC areas of over 0.97 on certain subjects. An average ROC area of 0.57 was computed over all subjects and all features due to wide inter subject variability.