TQCPat: Tree Quantum Circuit Pattern-based Feature Engineering Model for Automated Arrhythmia Detection using PPG Signals

Background and PurposeArrhythmia, which presents with irregular and/or fast/slow heartbeats, is associated with morbidity and mortality risks. Photoplethysmography (PPG) provides information on volume changes of blood flow and can be used to diagnose arrhythmia. In this work, we have proposed a novel, accurate, self-organized feature engineering model for arrhythmia detection using simple, cost-effective PPG signals.MethodWe have drawn inspiration from quantum circuits and employed a quantum-inspired feature extraction function /named the Tree Quantum Circuit Pattern (TQCPat). The proposed system consists of four main stages: (i) multilevel feature extraction using discrete wavelet transform (MDWT) and TQCPat, (ii) feature selection using Chi-squared (Chi2) and neighborhood component analysis (NCA), (iii) classification using k-nearest neighbors (kNN) and support vector machine (SVM) and (iv) information fusion.ResultsOur proposed TQCPat-based feature engineering model has yielded a classification accuracy of 91.30% using 46,827 PPG signals in classifying six classes with ten-fold cross-validation.ConclusionOur results show that the proposed TQCPat-based model is accurate for arrhythmia classification using PPG signals and can be tested with a large database and more arrhythmia classes.