ECG classification comparison between MF-DFA and MF-DXA

Abstract

In this paper, automatic electrocardiogram (ECG) recognition and classification algorithms based on multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) and multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DXA) were studied. As human heart is a complex, nonlinear, chaotic system, using multifractal analysis to analyze chaotic systems is also a trend. We performed a comparison study of the multifractal nature of the healthy subjects and that of the cardiac dysfunctions ones. To analyze multifractal property quantitatively, the ranges of the Hurst exponent (δh) are computed by MF-DFA and MF-DXA. We found that for MF-DFA, the area of Hurst exponents for atrial premature beat (APB) people was narrower than normal sinus rhythm (NSR) subjects, and for MF-DXA, the difference of δh (δ(δh)) of NSR and APB subjects was larger than that of MF-DFA. We then regarded the Hurst exponents (h) as the input vectors and took them into support vector machine (SVM) for classification. The results showed that h obtained from MF-DXA led to a higher classification accuracy than that of MF-DFA. This is related to the widening of the difference in the values of Hurst exponents in MF-DFA and MF-DXA. The proposed MF-DFA-SVM and MF-DXA-SVM systems achieved classification accuracy of 86.54% ± 0.068% and 98.63% ± 0.0644%, achieved classification sensitivity of 75.03% ± 0.1323% and 90.77% ± 0.1309%, achieved classification specificity of 86.66% ± 0.1131% and 96.47% ± 0.0891%, respectively. In general, the Hurst exponents obtained from MF-DXA played an important role in classifying ECG of the healthy and that of the cardiac dysfunctions subjects. Moreover, MF-DXA was more accurate than MF-DFA in the classification of ECG studied in this paper. The research in automatic medical diagnosis and early warning of major diseases has very important practical value. © 2021 World Scientific Publishing Company.