Teaching a Machine to Diagnose a Heart Disease; Beginning from digitizing scanned ECGs to detecting the Brugada Syndrome (BrS)

TL;DR

This paper develops a machine learning pipeline that digitizes scanned ECG images to detect Brugada Syndrome, demonstrating the feasibility of automated diagnosis from paper-based ECGs.

Contribution

It introduces a novel pipeline for converting scanned ECG images into digital data and applies an LSTM classifier for BrS detection, advancing computational diagnosis methods.

Findings

Pipeline successfully digitizes ECG images with preserved features.

LSTM classifier distinguishes BrS cases from ECG data.

Framework provides a foundation for future automated ECG analysis.

Abstract

Medical diagnoses can shape and change the life of a person drastically. Therefore, it is always best advised to collect as much evidence as possible to be certain about the diagnosis. Unfortunately, in the case of the Brugada Syndrome (BrS), a rare and inherited heart disease, only one diagnostic criterion exists, namely, a typical pattern in the Electrocardiogram (ECG). In the following treatise, we question whether the investigation of ECG strips by the means of machine learning methods improves the detection of BrS positive cases and hence, the diagnostic process. We propose a pipeline that reads in scanned images of ECGs, and transforms the encaptured signals to digital time-voltage data after several processing steps. Then, we present a long short-term memory (LSTM) classifier that is built based on the previously extracted data and that makes the diagnosis. The proposed pipeline distinguishes between three major types of ECG images and recreates each recorded lead signal. Features and quality are retained during the digitization of the data, albeit some encountered issues are not fully removed (Part I). Nevertheless, the results of the aforesaid program are suitable for further investigation of the ECG by a computational method such as the proposed classifier which proves the concept and could be the architectural basis for future research (Part II). This thesis is divided into two parts as they are part of the same process but conceptually different. It is hoped that this work builds a new foundation for computational investigations in the case of the BrS and its diagnosis.