Pain is a subjective feeling; it is a sensation that every human being must have experienced all their life. Yet, its mechanism and the way to immune to it is still a question to be answered. This ...review presents the mechanism and correlation of pain and stress, their assessment and detection approach with medical devices and wearable sensors. Various physiological signals (i.e., heart activity, brain activity, muscle activity, electrodermal activity, respiratory, blood volume pulse, skin temperature) and behavioral signals are organized for wearables sensors detection. By reviewing the wearable sensors used in the healthcare domain, we hope to find a way for wearable healthcare-monitoring system to be applied on pain and stress detection. Since pain leads to multiple consequences or symptoms such as muscle tension and depression that are stress related, there is a chance to find a new approach for chronic pain detection using daily life sensors or devices. Then by integrating modern computing techniques, there is a chance to handle pain and stress management issue.
About one-third of acute stroke patients may experience stroke-in-evolution, which is often associated with a worse outcome. Recently, we showed that multiscale entropy (MSE), a non-linear method for ...analysis of heart rate variability (HRV), is an early outcome predictor in non-atrial fibrillation (non-AF) stroke patients. We aimed to further investigate MSE as a predictor of SIE. We included 90 non-AF ischemic stroke patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). Nineteen (21.1%) patients met the criteria of SIE, which was defined as an increase in the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score of ≥2 points within 3 days of admission. The MSE of HRV was analyzed from 1-hour continuous ECG signals during the first 24 hours of admission. The complexity index was defined as the area under the MSE curve. Compared with patients without SIE, those with SIE had a significantly lower complexity index value (21.3 ± 8.5 vs 26.5 ± 7.7, P = 0.012). After adjustment for clinical variables, patients with higher complexity index values were significantly less likely to have SIE (odds ratio = 0.897, 95% confidence interval 0.818-0.983, P = 0.020). In summary, early assessment of HRV by MSE can be a potential predictor of SIE in ICU-admitted non-AF ischemic stroke patients.
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•A new ECG arrhythmia classification method combining recurrence plot (RP) and deep learning in two stages is proposed.•1D ECG signals were converted into 2D images using the RP tool ...to expose the arrhythmia features for the CNN to classify.•We applied 2D ECG images since CNN leverages spatial information, and therefore well suited for image classification.•To archive better results, we took 2-second ECG segments, then applied a two-stage classification and the R-peak detection.
Cardiovascular diseases affect approximately 50 million people worldwide; thus, heart disease prevention is one of the most important tasks of any health care system. Despite the high popularity electrocardiography, superior automatic electrocardiography (ECG) signal analysis methods are required. The aim of this research was to design a new deep learning method for effectively classifying arrhythmia by using 2-second segments of 2D recurrence plot images of ECG signals. In the first stage, the noise and ventricular fibrillation (VF) categories were distinguished. In the second stage, the atrial fibrillation (AF), normal, premature AF, and premature VF categories were distinguished. Models were trained and tested using ECG databases publicly available at the website of PhysioNet. The MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, Creighton University Ventricular Tachyarrhythmia Database, MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation Database, and MIT-BIH Malignant Ventricular Ectopy Database were used to compare six types of arrhythmia. Testing accuracies of up to 95.3 % ± 1.27 % and 98.41 % ± 0.11 % were achieved for arrhythmia detection in the first and second stage, respectively, after five-fold cross-validation. In conclusion, this study provides clinicians with an advanced methodology for detecting and discriminating between different arrhythmia types.
Atrial fibrillation (AF) detection is crucial for stroke prevention. We investigated the potential of quantitative analyses of photoplethysmogram (PPG) waveforms to identify AF. Continuous ...electrocardiogram (EKG) and fingertip PPG were recorded simultaneously in acute stroke patients (n = 666) admitted to an intensive care unit. Each EKG was visually labeled as AF (n = 150, 22.5%) or non-AF. Linear and nonlinear features from the pulse interval (PIN) and peak amplitude (AMP) of PPG waveforms were extracted from the first 1, 2, and 10 min of data. Logistic regression analysis revealed six independent PPG features feasibly identifying AF rhythm, including three PIN-related (mean, mean of standard deviation, and sample entropy), and three AMP-related features (mean of the root mean square of the successive differences, sample entropy, and turning point ratio) (all p < 0.01). The performance of the PPG analytic program comprising all 6 features that were extracted from the 2-min data was better than that from the 1-min data (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.972 (95% confidence interval 0.951-0.989) vs. 0.949 (0.929-0.970), p < 0.001 and was comparable to that from the 10-min data 0.973 (0.953-0.993) for AF identification. In summary, our study established the optimal PPG analytic program in reliably identifying AF rhythm.
The emulation of human behavior for autonomous problem solving has been an interdisciplinary field of research. Generally, classical control systems are used for static environments, where external ...disturbances and changes in internal parameters can be fully modulated before or neglected during operation. However, classical control systems are inadequate at addressing environmental uncertainty. By contrast, autonomous systems, which were first studied in the field of control systems, can be applied in an unknown environment. This paper summarizes the state of the art autonomous systems by first discussing the definition, modeling, and system structure of autonomous systems and then providing a perspective on how autonomous systems can be integrated with advanced resources (e.g., the Internet of Things, big data, Over-the-Air, and federated learning). Finally, what comes after reaching full autonomy is briefly discussed.
Background Heart rate variability (HRV) has been proposed as a predictor of acute stroke outcome. This study aimed to evaluate the predictive value of a novel non-linear method for analysis of HRV, ...multiscale entropy (MSE) and outcome of patients with acute stroke who had been admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). Methods The MSE of HRV was analysed from 1 h continuous ECG signals in ICU-admitted patients with acute stroke and controls. The complexity index was defined as the area under the MSE curve (scale 1–20). A favourable outcome was defined as modified Rankin scale 0–2 at 3 months after stroke. Results The trends of MSE curves in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) (n=77) were apparently different from those in patients with non-AF stroke (n=150) and controls (n=60). In addition, the values of complexity index were significantly lower in the patients with non-AF stroke than in the controls (25.8±.3 vs 32.3±4.3, p<0.001). After adjustment for clinical variables, patients without AF who had a favourable outcome were significantly related to higher complexity index values (OR=1.15, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.25, p<0.001). Importantly, the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting a favourable outcome of patients with non-AF stroke from clinical parameters was 0.858 (95% CI 0.797 to 0.919) and significantly improved to 0.903 (95% CI 0.853 to 0.954) after adding on the parameter of complexity index values (p=0.020). Conclusions In ICU-admitted patients with acute stroke, early assessment of the complexity of HRV by MSE can help in predicting outcomes in patients without AF.
Recently, significant developments have been achieved in the field of artificial intelligence, in particular the introduction of deep learning technology that has improved the learning and prediction ...accuracy to unpresented levels, especially when dealing with big data and high-resolution images. Significant developments have occurred in the area of medical signal processing, measurement techniques, and health monitoring, such as vital biological signs for biomedical systems and noise and vibration of mechanical systems, which are carried out by instruments that generate large data sets. These big data sets, ultimately driven by high population growth, would require Artificial Intelligence techniques to analyse and model. In this Special Issue, papers are presented on the latest signal processing and deep learning techniques used for health monitoring of biomedical and mechanical systems.
In this paper, an effective electrocardiogram (ECG) recurrence plot (RP)-based arrhythmia classification algorithm that can be implemented in portable devices is presented. Public databases from ...PhysioNet were used to conduct this study including the MIT-BIH Atrial Fibrillation Database, the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database, the MIT-BIH Malignant Ventricular Ectopy Database, and the Creighton University Ventricular Tachyarrhythmia Database. ECG time series were segmented and converted using an RP, and two-dimensional images were used as inputs to the CNN classifiers. In this study, two-stage classification is proposed to improve the accuracy. The ResNet-18 architecture was applied to detect ventricular fibrillation (VF) and noise during the first stage, whereas normal, atrial fibrillation, premature atrial contraction, and premature ventricular contractions were detected using ResNet-50 in the second stage. The method was evaluated using 5-fold cross-validation which improved the results when compared to previous studies, achieving first and second stage average accuracies of 97.21% and 98.36%, sensitivities of 96.49% and 97.92%, positive predictive values of 95.54% and 98.20%, and F1-scores of 95.96% and 98.05%, respectively. Furthermore, a 5-fold improvement in the memory requirement was achieved when compared with a previous study, making this classifier feasible for use in resource-constricted environments such as portable devices. Even though the method is successful, first stage training requires combining four different arrhythmia types into one label (other), which generates more data for the other category than for VF and noise, thus creating a data imbalance that affects the first stage performance.
The present study aimed to compare various entropy measures to assess the dynamics and complexity of center of pressure (COP) displacements. Perturbing balance tests are often used in healthy ...subjects to imitate either pathological conditions or to test the sensitivity of postural analysis techniques. Eleven healthy adult subjects were asked to stand in normal stance in three experimental conditions while the visuo-kinesthetic input was altered. COP displacement was recorded using a force plate. Three entropy measures Sample Entropy (SE), Multi-Scale Entropy (MSE), and Multivariate Multi Scale Entropy (MMSE) describing COP regularity at different scales were compared to traditional measures of COP variability. The analyses of the COP trajectories revealed that suppression of vision produced minor changes in COP displacement and in the COP characteristics. The comparison with the reference analysis showed that the entropy measures analysis techniques are more sensitive in the incremented time series compared to the classical parameters and entropy measures of original time series. Non-linear methods appear to be an additional valuable tool for analysis of the dynamics of posture especially when applied on incremental time series.