Noninvasive Blood Glucose Estimation via ECG: A Multi-Expert SC-ResNet Model

Diabetes mellitus, a chronic metabolic disorder, has seen a steep rise in global incidence, posing a significant health challenge. Traditional blood glucose estimation methods are invasive and limited, failing to reflect blood glucose fluctuations comprehensively. However, these fluctuations elicit responses from the autonomic nervous system, resulting in electrocardiographic (ECG) alterations, offering a novel avenue for noninvasive Blood Glucose (BG) estimation. In this work, we propose a Multi-Expert SC-ResNet model to enhance the accuracy and reliability of glucose prediction utilizing ECG signals. Firstly, tailored to the characteristics such as dynamic changes and periodicity of ECG signals, the SC-ResNet is designed, which integrates the Spatial and Channel reconstruction Convolution (SCConv) module into ResNet, effectively reducing spatial and channel redundancy and facilitating the learning of representative features. Secondly, we combine an innovative Multi-Expert method with SC-ResNet model to comprehensively capture the features of ECG signals at different blood glucose levels. ECG datasets are categorized based on their corresponding blood glucose into three different categories: Hypoglycaemic (L), Normoglycaemic (N), and Hyperglycaemic (H). For each category, we use the SC-ResNet model to extract deep features and then perform feature fusion. These fused features are finally fed into the Random Forest model for blood glucose prediction. Experimental validation on the D1NAMO dataset demonstrates the superior performance of the proposed method in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Relative Difference (MARD), and Clarke Error Grid Analysis (CEGA). The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the method for ECG-based blood glucose estimation and indicate its potential for practical diabetes management.