Biometric Identification Through ECG Signal Using a
Hybridized Approach
Ubaid-ur-Rehman
Dept. of Mechatronics Engineering
National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST),
Pakistan
+923325650295
ubaid.rehman86@mts.ceme.edu.pk
Javaid Iqbal
Dept. of Mechatronics Engineering
National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST),
Pakistan
+923005107045
j.iqbal@ceme.nust.edu.pk
ABSTRACT
Automatic identification of individuals using biometric features is
an area that has gained high importance nowadays. The paper
presents a novel approach for biometric identification through
ECG signal using hybridization of different features and Radial
Basis Function Neural Network (RBF-NN). Three different
features namely ARIMA, Wavelet Entropy, and Sample Entropy
are extracted from an ECG dataset. The features are then fed to an
RBF-NN to identify different individuals. In the past, these
features were used individually for person identification. This
paper presents an approach for person identification by
hybridization of the above mentioned features. The proposed
approach shows promising results with an accuracy of 99.50% to
identify 55 individuals correctly.
CCS Concepts
• Security and privacy ➝ Security services
engines • Authentication➝ Biometrics.
Keywords
Biometric identification; electrocardiography; sample entropy;
wavelet entropy; radial basis function neural network.
1. INTRODUCTION
Biometric identification is a technique used to identity a person by
detecting a specific behavioral characteristic or physiological
feature. Physical features are stable physical patterns like iris
patterns or palm prints. Behavioral characteristics are influenced
by both controllable and less controllable actions. Behavioral
characteristics, such as signature, voice or key press dynamics
might vary with the passage of time. Hence, an update is required
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
Permissions@acm.org.
ICCAI '19, April 19–22, 2019, Bali, Indonesia
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery.
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6106-4/19/04…$15.00
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3330482.3330496
226
Khurram Kamal
Dept. of Mechatronics Engineering
National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST),
Pakistan
+923353309916
k.kamal@ceme.nust.edu.pk
Muhammad Fahad Sheikh
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
University of Management and Technology, Sialkot
+923056251434
muhammad.fahad@skt.umt.edu.pk
with every use of the biometric system. Physiological feature-
based systems offer better precision and security while behavior-
based systems are low cost and less troubling for users. The
biometric features are specific for each person and can be used to
prevent crimes based on identity forging. A biometric feature
cannot be lost or forgotten as compared to a password or Personal
Identification Number (PIN). Currently available and under
development biometric identification methods consists of
fingerprint scan, face recognition, retinal scan, iris pattern, voice
pattern and electrocardiography.
Fingerprint identification [1] is the oldest and most widely used
technique. Fingerprints consist of the dermal, which are
unalterable and unique. Biometric verification through
fingerprints involves the acquisition of image, followed by the
feature extraction from that image. Pattern of the finger
impressions are then matched from the database and decision on
acceptance and rejection is made. However, Weak, eliminated or
fake fingerprint impressions using latex materials can cause
problems during fingerprint biometric. Voice Biometrics [2]
identifies person using their unique vocal traits. Voice recognition
techniques involve the signal acquisition through microphone and
pattern matching algorithm is used to find the perfect match of the
voice from the database. Drawbacks of Voice biometrics involves
low accuracy, usage of one’s voice recording for breaching
security and illness as cold changes person voice, which then
becomes difficult to recognize.
Iris recognition [3] involves iris edge and boundaries extraction
from the eye image in the pre-processing stage. Distinct features
are extracted from the preprocessed image of iris. Features from
the iris pattern are compared to find the perfect match for the
person from the database. Iris recognition is expensive and
intrusive method as it needs a lot of memory to store the database.
Facial recognition [4] utilizes the distinctive face patterns and
structure of each person for identification. Digital scan or live
picture of the subject was used to acquire the image. Software
extracts the faces from the image and these extracted faces are
used to compare with the faces in the database. Accuracy of a
facial recognition system affects by lamination or slight changes
in person’s hair.
Electrocardiography (ECG) [5] is the process of recording the
electrical signals generated by the heart of an individual.
Electrodes are placed on top of the skin for the specific period to 3. BACKGROUND THEORY
detect the electric signals produce by the heart muscles. ECG
signal gives live detection and robustness to attacks. Different 3.1 Electrocardiography
techniques have been proposed by different researchers for ECG test is used to study stimuli generated by heart muscle to
biometric verification through ECG signals. Tawfik et al. [6] record its rhythm and activity through electrical activity for a
proposed the use of QT and QRS complex of the ECG signal for certain amount of time. It is commonly used to detect the cardio
human identification in which Framingham correction formula diseases like disorder of the heart. Heartbeat of every person
was used for the domain normalization and fixed length was varies with different circumstances like age factor, exercise, with
applied to the QT wave. Time domain was used to find the QRS different diseases.
wave and Discrete Cosine Transformation (DCT) coefficients
were extracted from QT and QRS complex. Back prorogation
neural network was used for the classification with the accuracy
of for human identification. Saechia et al. [7] examined
three subsequences P, QRS and T for the person identification
using ECG signal. Fourier transform was used for the feature
extraction and supervised learning neural network was used for
classification. Bassiouni et al. [8] used Autocorrelation and
Discrete Cousin Transformation (AC/DCT) for person
identification using ECG signal. MIT-BIH data set was used for
the classification. Baseline AC/DCT was used to extract features
from the ECG signal. Momentum back propagation method was
used which showed an accuracy of . Ye et al. [9] proposed
the use of Wavelet Transformation (WT) and Support Vector
Machine (SVM) for the person identification through ECG signal.
MIT-BIH data set was used and preprocessed using filters to
eliminate the baseline noise and get the desired signal. Daubechies
wavelet and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were applied
for the feature extraction and dimensionality reduction
respectively. Gaussian RBF kernel based SVM was applied and Figure 1. Model of the proposed technique for human
two classes were made. Multi lead fusion was applied to compare biometric verification using ECG signals.
the classes and classify the data. Shen et al. [10] used Piecewise
Linear Representation (PLR) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW)
for person verification using ECG signal. PLR was used to save
the important information of the ECG signal while DTW was used
to find the similarity measure of the two segments. Butterworth
band pass filter was used for the noise removal to get the desired
ECG signal.
Quelli et al. [11] proposed Autoregressive (AR) model for
retrieval of distinct features and Quadratic Discriminant Function
(QDF) to discriminate Cardiac Arrhythmia Diagnosis using ECG
signals. Features related to sinus rhythm, atrial premature
contraction, premature ventricular contraction, ventricular
tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation and supra-ventricular
tachycardia were analyzed for each ECG signal pattern. MIT-BIH
data set was used. Least square filter was used for removing the
unwanted noise. AR coefficients has been extracted from retrieved Figure 2. Architecture of ECG signal.
features using Burg’s algorithm based on data pattern. For the
classification, QDF was applied to classify the six elements.
ECG signal is divided in to PQRST intervals; Figure 2 shows
A novel approach has been proposed in this paper for person these intervals segments and complex. P wave has small
identification based on ECG signal by combining three features to deflection and show atrial depolarization while PR interval
form a hybrid data set. RBF-NN is used for the classification of exhibits time interval among QRS complex and P wave’s first
the person. Next section explains the proposed technique. deflection respectively. QRS complex shows ventricular
depolarization where small Q wave represent depolarization of
2. PROPOSED TECHNIQUE interventricular spectrum, R wave show main mass ventricles and
Proposed technique uses ECG signals from PTB data set, S wave reflects the final depolarization. T wave reflects
preprocess the signals using Butterworth band-pass filter. Three ventricular repolarization and ST segment also called ST interval
different types of features namely sample entropy, wavelet time period between start of T wave and end of QRS complex.
entropy and ARIMA coefficients are extracted from de-noised and
pre-processed ECG signals. These hybrid features are used as 3.2 Butterworth Band Pass Filter
inputs to RBF-NN for classification and person identification. Band pass filter [12] helps to remove the unwanted signals and
noise from the signal. This filter is used to flat the frequency
response in pass band. Butterworth filter closer approximations
can be obtained by increasing the numbers of the filter elements

227
by adjusting the right values. Combination of high pass and low RBF-NN converts a vector of input by forward feeding
pass filter is used to remove noise. By adjusting these high and basis function h(x) by combining linear results to weight
low values of filters desired values can be obtain. that outputs .

3.3 Wavelet Entropy

Wavelet [13] is the analysis method that depends on the
categorization and amplitude basis of the signal. The wavelet is a
smooth oscillator that gives rapid and good results in frequencies
and time. Wavelet entropy provides us with tremendous amount
of information on the degree of signal or disorder of order about
the dynamic process related with the signal. When a random
process generates a signal, it is taken as disordered behavior in
general; hence it shows significant wavelet representation from
various frequency bands. The relative wavelet energy for all
resolution levels will almost be equal and wavelet entropy will
take the maximum values among them.

3.4 Sample Entropy

Sample entropy [14] is the estimate of the conditional probability
using negative natural logarithm. It is also used to find complexity
of time series signals or diagnosing diseased states. Sample
entropy relies upon the signal to noise ratio and relation between
Nyquist rate and sampling frequency. Correct parameters and
correct algorithm are used to calculate sample entropy, which
provide best discernment between groups, and proves relative
consistency. To calculate sample entropy (SampEn) mathematical
formula is given below: Figure 3. Radial basis neural network architecture [15].

  
The RBF network uses a unique approach by using Gaussian
Whereas, strength of template vectors in set having
function as foundation function in the hidden measurements are in
of length , number of
Euclidean unit. Each hidden layer’s neuron weights correspond to
template vectors sets having of length
center of cluster coordinates. Hence distance of an input
n. Value of A always remains smaller or equal to B. m represent
pattern ‘X’ is calculated by using the succeeding equation
length of the data points and r represent distance.

3.5 Autoregressive Integrated Moving  √∑  

Average (ARIMA)
ARIMA is used for forecasting time series module. ARIMA
models are mostly applied on the data which are non-stationary,
where initial difference is used one or more times to remove the
non stationary part. ARIMA consist of three features Auto
regressive (AR) model gives variables that changes with the
regresses depends on the values, lagged or prior. Moving Average
(MA) indicates regression error in the linear combination that
shows that error terms occur contemporaneously and occur in past
various time. The Integrated (I) part show difference of the values
and previous values that are replaced. These features are used to
model fit the data as much as possible. The mathematical
representations given as following:
  
  
Whereas p, d and q shows the integer values of the AR, MA and I,
and d indicates the level of difference.
3.6 Radial Basis Function Neural Network
RBF-NN [15] is a neural network that utilizes a radial and linear
basis activation function. RBF-NN structure comprises of 3-layer
network where input layer gets the input variables and does not
carry out any assignment. Hidden layer converts input space to
higher dimension through charting to separate linearly all the non-
linear patterns. The output layer performs operation with a linear
output using a simple weighted sum technique. The traditional
An RBF network is non-liner if the base functions can move or
change the size or if there is multiple printed layers. Focus on
single-layer network with functions that are fixed in position and
size. Non-liner optimization Regular regression only for regular
parameters and beyond the maximum selection of base functions
in the selection section. Analyzing is easy and compatible with a
firm fit in the Linear algebra world.
4. EXPERIMENTATION
4.1 Pre Processing
ECG dataset is taken from the PTB [16], it includes 290 patients
with 549 records. In this paper, ECG signals of 55 persons are
used that were acquired with 12 conventional leads and three
frank leads with sample frequency of. First pre-processing is done
on ECG signals to remove the unwanted noise from the signal.
Desired signals having frequency range between 0.5Hz to 45Hz
are obtained using Butterworth band pass filter.
4.2 Feature Extraction
Features are the distinct characteristics extracted from the signal.
Feature extraction techniques are applied on the filtered ECG
signals to obtain the distinct patterns in the signal. Three different
types of features sample entropy, wavelet entropy and ARIMA
coefficients are extracted from the de-noised ECG signals.
ARIMA model is applied to extract feature, it includes 25
Autoregressive (AR) coefficient and 25 Moving Average (MA)
coefficient from the ECG signal. Filtered data is divided into 50
segments to apply wavelet entropy on the ECG signal. Lastly,

228
sample entropy is applied on the filtered ECG signal to get the last
feature. All these three types of features are combined together to
form hybrid feature set. These hybrid features are used as inputs
to the neural network
4.3 Classification Results
Classification has been performed through RBF-NN using hybrid
features extracted from ECG signals. Input layer is fed with
hybrid features, hidden layer consist of neuron with Gaussian
activation function and output layer consist of corresponding
patterns.
Dataset consists of two parts; training data and testing data. Out of
dataset, 70% is used as training data and trained network is tested
against the remaining 30% of the testing dataset. Network is
trained against the given arithmetic patterns to minimize the Mean
Squared Error (MSE). RBF-NN has capability to select the
appropriate amount of hidden neurons to achieve the pre-set value
of Mean Squared Error (MSE).The network is trained using 17
input and 55 output neurons. Training parameters of RBF-NN are
shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Summary of training parameters for RBF-NN
Training involves the Updation of weights to minimize the MSE;
once the network is trained for the set stopping criteria, updated
weights are then fixed and are used to analyze and compare with
testing and validation data. RBF-NN with preset values of input
and output neurons selects 2784 hidden layer neurons to achieve
the preset MSE of 0.0001. Figure 4 shows the performance curve
of the classifier.
Figure 4. RBF-NN performance training curve for
classification.
Accuracy depends on True positive (TP), True Negative (TN),
False Positive (FP) and False Negative (FN). TP shows the actual
229
predicted values, if the value of actual class is positive then
predicted value is also positive. TN are the negative predicted
value, which means actual class value is no then predicted value is
also no. FP are the values when actual class shows positive but
predicted class shows negative values. FN represents the values
when actual class is negative but predicted values are positive.
Accuracy shows the performance of the classifier, which is given
by equation below.
  
Table 2. Summary of results for biometric classification using
RBF-NN
RBF-NN showed a maximum of 99.50% classification accuracy
with 17 input neurons, 2784 hidden layer neurons, 55 output
neurons and a performance MSE of 0.00011784 for preset training
MSE of 0.0001 for human biometric identification using ECG
signals.
Possible reasons for the high performance of RBF-NN classifier
for biometric identification using ECG signals lies in the novel
hybrid feature extraction from ECG signals and the presence of
Gaussian activation functions in the hidden layer of network
5. CONCLUSION
The proposed approach presents a novel technique for biometric
identification of people using ECG signals. A hybrid approach
was proposed by combining ARIMA, Wavelet Entropy and
Sample Entropy was used as input features to a Radial Basis
Function Neural Networks. The result shows promising future for
the proposed approach with accuracy of 99.5% for identification
of 55 individuals. Future work involves further improvement in
the proposed technique to identify increased number of
individuals with high accuracy.
6. REFERENCES
[1] Subban, R. and Mankame, D.P., 2013. A study of biometric
approach using fingerprint recognition. Lecture notes on
software engineering, 1(2), p.209.
[2] Biometricupdate.com. (2018). [online] Available at:
https://www.biometricupdate.com/wp/content/uploads/2014/
05/Voice-Biometrics.pdf.
[3] Elsherief, S.M., Allam, M.E. and Fakhr, M.W., 2006,
November. Biometric personal identification based on iris
recognition. In Computer Engineering and Systems, The
2006 International Conference on (pp. 208-213). IEEE.
[4] Bhatia, R., 2013. Biometrics and face recognition techniques.
International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer
Science and Software Engineering, 3(5).
[5] Foteini. ECG in biometric recognition: Time dependency and
application challenges. University of Toronto, 2011.
[6] Tawfik, M.M. and Kamal, H.S.T., 2011. Human
identification using QT signal and QRS complex of the ECG.
Online J Electron Electr Eng (OJEEE), 3, pp.1-5.
[7] Saechia, S., Koseeyaporn, J. and Wardkein, P., 2005,
November. Human identification system based ECG signal.
In TENCON 2005 2005 IEEE Region 10 (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
[8] Bassiouni, M., Khaleefa, W., El-Dahshan, E.A. and Salem,
A.B.M., 2016. A machine learning technique for person
identification using ECG signals. Int. J. Appl. Phys, 1, pp.37-
41.
[9] Ye, C., Coimbra, M.T. and Kumar, B.V., 2010, August.
Arrhythmia detection and classification using morphological
and dynamic features of ECG signals. In Engineering in
Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2010 Annual
International Conference of the IEEE (pp. 1918-1921). IEEE.
[10] Shen, J., Bao, S.D., Yang, L.C. and Li, Y., 2011, August.
The PLR-DTW method for ECG based biometric
identification. In Engineering in Medicine and Biology
Society, EMBC, 2011 Annual International Conference of
the IEEE (pp. 5248-5251). IEEE.
[11] Ouelli, A., ElhadadiL, B., Aissaoui, H. and Bouikhalene, B.,
2012. AR modeling for automatic cardiac arrhythmia
230
diagnosis using QDF based algorithm. International Journal
of Advanced Research in Computer Science and Software
Engineering, 2(5).
[12] Butterworth, S., 1930. On the theory of filter amplifiers.
Wireless Engineer, 7(6), pp.536-541.
[13] Rosso, O.A., Blanco, S., Yordanova, J., Kolev, V., Figliola,
A., Schürmann, M. and Başar, E., 2001. Wavelet entropy: a
new tool for analysis of short duration brain electrical signals.
Journal of neuroscience methods, 105(1), pp.65-75.
[14] Yentes, J.M., Hunt, N., Schmid, K.K., Kaipust, J.P., McGrath
D. and Stergiou, N., 2013. The appropriate use of
approximate entropy and sample entropy with short data sets.
Annals of biomedical engineering, 41(2), pp.349-365.
[15] Seenivasagam, V. and Arumugadevi, S., 2012. Radial Basis
Function Neural Networks (RBFNN) For Fire Image
Segmentation. International Journal of Advanced Research
Computer Engineering & Technology (IJARCET), 1(6),
pp.pp-212.
[16] The PTB Diagnostic ECG Database,
physionet.org/physiobank/database/ptbdb/.