Comparing Classical Machine Learning and Deep Learning for Classification of Arrhythmia from ECG Signals

Arrhythmia detection is a vital task for reducing the mortality rate of cardiovascular diseases. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a simple and inexpensive tool that can provide valuable information about the heart’s electrical activity and detect arrhythmias. However, manual analysis of ECG signals can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Therefore, machine learning models have been proposed to automate the process and improve the accuracy and efficiency of arrhythmia detection. In this paper, we compare six machine learning models, namely ADA boosting, Gradient Boost, Random Forest, C-Support Vector (SVC), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), and Long Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM), for arrhythmia detection using ECG data from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database. We evaluate the performance of the models using various metrics, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, on different classes of ECG beats. We also use confusion matrices to visualize the errors made by the models. We find that the CNN model is the best performing model overall, achieving accuracy of 95% and F1-score of 84.75%. SVC and LSTM were the second and third best, achieving accuracy of 94% and 93%, respectively. We also discuss the challenges of using ECG data for arrhythmia detection, such as noise, imbalance, and similarity of classes. We suggest some possible ways to overcome these challenges, such as using more advanced preprocessing and resampling techniques, or incorporating domain knowledge and expert feedback into the models.