Robust peak detection for photoplethysmography signal analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces Aboy++, an improved peak detection algorithm for photoplethysmography signals, achieving higher accuracy and significantly faster processing than previous methods, enhancing long-term PPG data analysis for clinical and consumer use.

Contribution

The paper presents Aboy++, a novel and more efficient peak detector for PPG signals, outperforming the original Aboy in accuracy and speed.

Findings

Aboy++ achieved an F1-score of 85.5%.

Processing time for 1-hour recordings was less than 2 seconds.

Aboy++ outperforms previous peak detection methods in accuracy and efficiency.

Abstract

Efficient and accurate evaluation of long-term photoplethysmography (PPG) recordings is essential for both clinical assessments and consumer products. In 2021, the top opensource peak detectors were benchmarked on the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) database consisting of polysomnography (PSG) recordings and continuous sleep PPG data, where the Automatic Beat Detector (Aboy) had the best accuracy. This work presents Aboy++, an improved version of the original Aboy beat detector. The algorithm was evaluated on 100 adult PPG recordings from the MESA database, which contains more than 4.25 million reference beats. Aboy++ achieved an F1-score of 85.5%, compared to 80.99% for the original Aboy peak detector. On average, Aboy++ processed a 1 hour-long recording in less than 2 seconds. This is compared to 115 seconds (i.e., over 57-times longer) for the open-source implementation of the original Aboy peak detector. This study demonstrated the importance of developing robust algorithms like Aboy++ to improve PPG data analysis and clinical outcomes. Overall, Aboy++ is a reliable tool for evaluating long-term wearable PPG measurements in clinical and consumer contexts.