SIM-ECG: A Signal Importance Mask-driven ECGClassification System

TL;DR

The paper introduces SIM-ECG, a machine learning system that uses signal importance masks and feedback to improve ECG diagnosis accuracy and interpretability, aiding medical professionals in early heart disease detection.

Contribution

It presents a novel feedback-driven ECG classification system that enhances accuracy and interpretability over traditional models.

Findings

Outperforms baseline models in F-score and MacroAUC.

Generates more accurate interpretability maps.

Improves trust and usability for medical personnel.

Abstract

Heart disease is the number one killer, and ECGs can assist in the early diagnosis and prevention of deadly outcomes. Accurate ECG interpretation is critical in detecting heart diseases; however, they are often misinterpreted due to a lack of training or insufficient time spent to detect minute anomalies. Subsequently, researchers turned to machine learning to assist in the analysis. However, existing systems are not as accurate as skilled ECG readers, and black-box approaches to providing diagnosis result in a lack of trust by medical personnel in a given diagnosis. To address these issues, we propose a signal importance mask feedback-based machine learning system that continuously accepts feedback, improves accuracy, and ex-plains the resulting diagnosis. This allows medical personnel to quickly glance at the output and either accept the results, validate the explanation and diagnosis, or quickly correct areas of misinterpretation, giving feedback to the system for improvement. We have tested our system on a publicly available dataset consisting of healthy and disease-indicating samples. We empirically show that our algorithm is better in terms of standard performance measures such as F-score and MacroAUC compared to normal training baseline (without feedback); we also show that our model generates better interpretability maps.