2020 International Conference on Computational Performance Evaluation (ComPE),

North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India. July 2–4, 2020

An Automatic Detection of Arrhythmia Disease

Diagnosis System based on Artificial Neural
Network and Support Vector Machine
Deepjyoti Kalita
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Indian Institute of Information Technology
Guwahati, India
deepjyotikalitatihu@gmail.com

Abstract—Early detection of the heart disease by using Com-

puter Aided Diagnosis system (CAD) which can decrease the
mortality rate among the cardiac patients. Arrhythmia is also
a heart disease when the uniform pumping mechanism of heart
becomes non-uniform and this will make very small change in the
Electro Cardiogram (ECG) signal. But with the help of normal
eyesight it is very difficult to detect the irregular heart function
from the ECG signal early stage. In this paper work we have
presented an highly efficient method for detection of Arrhythmia
disease based on ECG signal. For our work we have taken
the ECG signal data from MIT-BIH. Then we have use pre-
processing method to remove the noise from the signal. Then we
have detect the peaks from the ECG signal and QRS Complex.
After that feature extraction method and process normalization
done using the wavelet transform technique. After that use
Artificial neural network to find out the input data is normal
or abnormal. Our system gives 99.5% accuracy rate in Support
Vector Machine (SVM) base and 99% accuracy rate in Artificial
Neural Network (ANN) based system to detect the Arrhythmia Fig. 1: ECG Signal with its all components
disease from the given ECG signal. All the experiments are
simulated in MATLab Software.
Index Terms—Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD), Electro Car- But with the help of normal eye sight it may be difficult to
diogram (ECG), Arrhythmia, pre-processing, peak detection,
normalization, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Artificial Neural determine the disorder when it is very efficient to detect the
Network (ANN) non-uniform heart rate from the ECG signal with the aid of
computer aided system.
I. I NTRODUCTION The main steps of arrhythmia detection system are consist
In the current scenario cardio vascular disease (CVD) are of five stages [16]. Pre-processing, peak detection, feature
the primary source of death in the world due to the unhealthy extraction, normalization and neural network. ECG signal pre-
lifestyle such as smoking and drinking habits, diabetes mel- processing method include de-noising of the input signal and
litus, obesity etc [1-2]. The major cause of cardiac rhythm baseline correction methods. All the noise are removed in this
disorder abnormalities are atrial disorder and ventricular ar- steps to achieve the clear and sound input signal[17]. There
rhythmias defect. Cardiac arrhythmia is occur due to the non- are four peaks are present in one ECG signal P, Q, R, S and T.
uniform heartbeat. The heartbeat may be fast or slow compare QRS is called as and complex and it is the most important part
to the normal heart beat or may be sometimes fluctuating. The to detect any disease with the help of computer aided system
main symptoms of arrhythmia are weakness and pain in the [17]. For the details understanding of the process we have to
chest region [3]. So, to determine the disorder of the heart know the details about the ECG signal and its details.
rate we have need ECG signal. Electrocardiogram is a non- Now we will discuss how the ECG signal is generated from
invasive system i.e it will not affect the human body [13] and the heart. ECG is an electric signal which indicate the electric
it is very efficient. Heart signal are the bio-signal and which is activity of the heart [4-9]. This electric activity is performed in
non-stationary in nature. The ECG signal gives the graphical a specific graph. The one complete waveform of ECG signal
representation of the heart activity including all details like means the one time full cycle of the blood pump of the heart
heart rate, rhythm morphology etc [14-15]. With the help of chamber. So lots of information can be found from an ECG
ECG signal the doctors can determine the disorder of the heart. signal. The ECG signal is consist of P, QRS complex and T.

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Fig. 2: The Anatomical structure of heart
Before going to the peaks we have to understand the electrical
activity of the heart. There are four chamber in our heart. Two
chamber are in upper side and two chamber are in lower side as
shown in the figure 2. Upper chamber are called as right atrium
and left atrium and lower chamber is called as right ventricle
and left ventricle. The electric activity starts at SA (Sinoatrial)
Node which is located at the top right atrium region. And this
electric activity spread to the all chamber through the purkinje
fibers and thus all the normal heart functions performs. So
this all activities are shown with the help of ECG graphs.
When the depolarization or contraction of the upper chamber
happens then the P wave is generated. After that the blood
goes to the ventricle or lower chamber with the help of the
valve. In this case the upper chamber is in contraction mode
and lower chamber is in normal mode. Then coming to the
QRS complex of the ECG signal. This QRS complex is one
of the most informative parts of the ECG signal. This gives
the information about depolarization of the lower chamber and
repolarization of the upper chamber. That means the chamber
is in contraction mode and the upper chamber is in normal
condition mode. The T waveform of the ECG signal means
repolarization of the lower chamber. These all the cycle take
1000 m sec to complete the process. With the help of timing
analysis a physician can easily detect the disorder of heart or
any functional effect in the regular heart cycle. In our design
system also can detect any abnormality of the heart with the
help of neural network on the ECG signal.
II. MIT-BIH DATASET
The MIT-BIH dataset was the earliest high grade experi-
mental dataset which is generally available and easy to use
in arrhythmia detection disease [7-10]. This dataset is used
widely in lots of experimental research from the year of 1980
and it is widely available at almost 500 various website. This
ECG dataset contain 48 half-hour exempts of the two channel
also the ECG recordings gathered from 47 different subjects
almost for 24 hours which is studied by the BIH Arrhythmia
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Fig. 3: Block diagram of Arrhythmia Detection System
Laboratory. The 48 half-hour excerpts were sliced into two
different groups-
• 23 (the 100 series) were taken at random from the
collection of over 4000 Holter tapes.
• 25 (the 200 series) were selected to insert examples
of abnormal but clinically and physiologically prime
arrhythmias which will not be a good source of small
random sample.
All the ECG signal which are used in our paperwork are
collected from MIT-BIH database. Those ECG signals were
consist of a binary file (.dat), text header file (.hea) and a
binary annotation file (.atr). The header file is consist of short
type of text file which describe the contents of the ECG signal
including all clinical information. All the records are included
in binary file and some records are stored in annotation file.
Annotation file signifies the labels, record timing of the signal
etc.
III. M ETHODOLOGY
The arrhythmia detection is very difficult tasks in some
cases because sometimes it needs to check every heartbeat or
every ECG wave to detect the disease efficiently and accurate-
ly. It is very time consuming process for the physician [17].
So with the help of artificial intelligence we can design one
smart computer aided system which can detect the arrhythmia
disease very accurately and efficiently for the ECG signal.
From the block diagram we can easily understand the working
procedure of the whole mechanism.
In the block diagram we have seen that after taking the input
data from MIT-BIH dataset we have use pre-processing block.
In the pre-processing stage the main target is to remove the
noise from the input signal. There are three types of noise in
one ECG Signal-
• Electro-Myographic contamination noise (EMG noise)
• Baseline wandering noise (BW noise)
• Power line interface noise (A/C interface)
To reduce all the noise from the signal we have use discrete
wavelet transform (DWT) algorithm which is very strong
for non-stationary biomedical signal. It is very effective and
efficient signal processing tools for noise removal from the
input signal. In this process we have used Daubechies (db6)
wavelet basis function to remove the noise and the ECG data
is splitted upto nine levels. The wavelet based transformation
gives more advantages include co-efficient compaction, dilu-
tion of noise and removal of redundancy. Baseline wander is
formed due to effects of electrodes impedance, respiration and
body movements. To remove the baseline wander removal we
have use FIR low pass filter, 200ms median filter for QRS
complex and 300ms median filter for T wave accordingly.
After the pre-processing process the input signal is goes for
feature extraction and peak detection methods.
There are almost 13 characteristic features are available in
an ECG signal. We have to detect all the feature for increasing
the efficiency of the system. The feature can be explained as-
• Heart rate which can be detected the successive interval
between two QRS complex
• Change of the heart rate
• Width of the QRS Complex Region
• Normalized fount entropy for the QRS complex region
• Normalized fount entropy for ST wave region
• Complexity framework of the QRS complex region
• Complexity framework of the ST wave
• Spectral entropy detection
• R-T time interval
• Length between S-T segment region
• ST segment region divergence
• ST segment region angle divergence
• ST segment region
All these feature should be detected to design highly ef-
ficient system. We have used entropy based feature selection
methods in our design system. Entropy based measures can be
applied for measuring the correlations between uninterrupted
features as well, if the values are discretized properly in
advance. Entropy based method is used to select the feature
and for extraction of the feature from the input linear DWT-
depended technique and non-linear HOS-depended feature ex-
traction technique have been used. As the electrocardiography
signal are non-stationary in nature linear DWT-based give
the best and efficient performance in the feature extraction
method. Nonlinear HOS-based feature extraction techniques
is used to extract the features from non-stationary biomedical
signal, non-linear and non-Gaussian signals. This methods is
more efficient than liner DWT based methods thats why we
have used this methods in our designed system. The first and
second order statistics takes part as utmost important role in
the processing technique of non-stationary biomedical signal.
After completing the feature extraction block we have
design one normalization process to normalize the different
feature which is got from the ECG signal. Because the
quantities of the feature vector are different from each other.
We have use a function called mapstd to normalize the input
signal which is passed through he feature selection and feature
extraction block. They have zero mean value and also contain
unity standard deviation value.
After the normalization process we have use classification
methods for detection of abnormal or normal ECG signals
comparing with the standard and normal ECG signals. There
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Fig. 4: Support Vector Machine
are two types of classification methods are used and in
every case we have calculated the accuracy rate and compare
all the accuracy rate with all the existing techniques. The
neural network classification are used in various field like as
aerospace, finance, healthcare, communication etc. For pattern
classification process feed forward network has been used. The
feed forward neural network is very efficient due to the several
number of hidden layers and lots of hidden neurons present
there. To upgrade the learning technique back propagation
methodology has been used. With the assist of mean square
error we have updated the weights in the network. After that
the classifier can be able to detect the normal and abnormal
signal comparing with the training signal.
We have also used support vector machine algorithm (SVM)
for detection of normal or abnormal ECG signal classification
technique and compare with neural network based classifica-
tion and all other existing one techniques. It is basically a
supervised learning algorithm. This technique is used because
it gives relatively very good well margin or separation between
the two classes and also it is very efficient for inflated
dimensional spaces. It is also very effective even the number of
dimensions is significantly larger than the number of samples
and it memory efficient also. SVM creates the optimized hyper
plane which can minimize all the errors. The prime idea behind
SVM is to identify the best marginal hyper plane (MMH). This
hyper plane divide the given dataset into different classes and
the support vector point is located near to the MMH. All those
points are very important to form the classifier. The main aim
is to differentiate the input dataset with best way. The distance
between two nearest point is named as the border of the
classifier. So, identify the hyper plane is the main target with
largest possible boundary in between the given dataset and the
support vectors. After set up the model we have experimented
our dataset and all the results are shown and discussed in the
following section.
IV. R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS
From MIT-BIH dataset we have simulate the input images
with the help of our designed system and after the classifi-
cation technique we have calculated the sensitivity, specificity
and accuracy. The expression for all these terms are-
 TABLE II: Comparison of the classification efficiency of the
proposed method and some other existing works on MIT-BIT
dataset

SL Accuracy
Related Literature Year Classifier
No Rate (%)
Pranv Rajpurkar
1 2017 CNN 97%
et al. (3)
Maedeh Kiani DWT
2 2102 96.5%
Sarkalehm et al. (4) ANN
3 Sean Franklin et al. (5) 2013 ANN 95%
Fuzzy Logic
Mehmet Engin
4 2004 with 98%
et.al. (6)
NN
Yuksel Ozbay
5 2001 ANN 96%
et al. (7)
Fig. 5: Classification Results based on Neural Network Clas- DBSCAN
sifier Prathibhamol and
6 2017 80%
Cp et al. (8) Logistic
Regression
Vasu Gupta SVM and
7 77.4%
TP + TN et al. (9) Random Forest
Accuracy(Acc ) = (1) 8 Yang et al. (10) 2018 Liner SVM 97.94%
TP + TN + FP + FN SVM 98.91%
9 Elhaj et al. (11) 2016
TP NN 98.90%
Sensitivity(Sen ) = (2) SVM 96.92%
TP + FN 10 Martis et al. (12) 2013
NN 98.78%
TN SVM 99.50%
Specif icity(Spe ) = (3)
TN + FP 11 Proposed Methodology
NN 99.00%
In this equation TP signifies true positive, TN denotes true
negative, FP means falls positive and FN means false nega-
tive.True positive means correctly detected beats, true negative
means correctly undetected beats, false positive means falsely
detected beats and false negative means falsely undetected
beats. All the experiments are simulated in the MATLab
environment taking 200 samples for our experiment. After
simulating the results we have got 100 true positive value and
99 true negative value in case of SVM classifier and 1 false
negative value. Similarly we have got 100 true positive value,
98 true negative value and 2 false negative value in case of
neural network classifier. After getting all these value we can
easily calculated the accuracy, specificity and sensitivity value
and listed in the table 1.
TABLE I: Classification outcomes of the proposed methods Fig. 6: Classification Results based on Support Vector Machine
with the two different classifiers SVM and Neural Networks Classifier

Sensitivity Specificity Accuracy

Classifier
(%) (%) (%) rate. In the figure 5 and 6 we have showed the classification
Neural Network 98.03 100.00 99.00 results in the bar diagram.
Support Vector Machine
99.00 100.00 99.50
(SVM) V. C ONCLUSION
When any patient goes to the cardiac specialist physician
From the table 1 we have found that in Artificial Neural to check-up his or her heart then the physician first advised
Network based classifier technique the accuracy rate is almost him to do Echocardiogram always. So ECG is an important
99% and specificity is 100% and sensitivity is 98.03%. When diagnosis methodology which gives lots of details information
we have used support vector machine algorithm on the ECG to detect any disorder or diseases in heart. Arrhythmias is also
signal to detect Arrhythmias disease, we have found that a one kind of heart disorder which is cause of slow or fast
99.50% accuracy rate including 100% specificity and 99% heart rate. So it will be very helpful for our society if we
sensitivity. In the table 2 we have compared our proposed can detect cardiac disorder early and efficiently. Sometimes
methodology with various existing works in terms of accuracy doctors also may be take much longer time for diagnosis,

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but with the help of computer aided system using cutting
edge technology it will make the process of diagnosis very
quick. In our proposed methodology also we have use two
types of classification algorithms. One is neural network based
algorithm and other one is support vector machine algorithm.
In artificial neural network based technique we have got 99%
accuracy rate whether in case of support vector machine we
have got 99.5% accuracy rate. So with the help of our proposed
technique we can easily detect the arrhythmia disease at early
stage with high accuracy rate which can reduce the mortality
rate of the cardiac patient in our society.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We are so grateful to MIT-BIH dataset and the BIH
Arrhythmia Laboratory for providing the great and easily
understandable dataset for conducting our experiment.

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