Examining cross-database global training to evaluate five different methods for ventricular beat classification

The detection of ventricular beats in the holter recording is a task of great importance since it can direct clinicians toward the parts of the electrocardiogram record that might be crucial for determining the final diagnosis. Although there already exists a fair amount of research work dealing with ventricular beat detection in holter recordings, the vast majority uses a local training approach, which is highly disputable from the point of view of any practical-real-life-application. In this paper, we compare five well-known methods: a classical decision tree approach and its variant with fuzzy rules, a self-organizing map clustering method with template matching for classification, a back-propagation neural network and a support vector machine classifier, all examined using the same global cross-database approach for training and testing. For this task two databases were used-the MIT-BIH database and the AHA database. Both databases are required for testing any newly developed algorithms for holter beat classification that is going to be deployed in the EU market. According to cross-database global training, when the classifier is trained with the beats from the records of one database then the records from the other database are used for testing. The results of all the methods are compared and evaluated using the measures of sensitivity and specificity. The support vector machine classifier is the best classifier from the five we tested, achieving an average sensitivity of 87.20% and an average specificity of 91.57%, which outperforms nearly all the published algorithms when applied in the context of a similar global training approach.