针对纸质心电图图像的缺失与不同步问题,提出无需插值的鲁棒心律失常检测方法。
Masked Training for Robust Arrhythmia Detection from Digitalized Multiple Layout ECG Images
- 通过分块掩码训练直接建模异步和部分缺失信号,不依赖插值。
- 在模拟布局下平均AUROC达0.835,在真实数据上房颤检测最高达0.893。
- 注意力机制与医生标注高度一致,适合临床真实场景应用。
心电图对心血管疾病诊断至关重要,但许多场景中仅以多布局纸张打印件形式存在。将其转为数字信号时面临两大挑战:导联间时间不同步及局部信号完全缺失。现有模型难以同时处理这些问题且缺乏可解释性。本文提出PatchECG,结合自适应可变块缺失学习与掩码训练策略。模型将每导联划分为固定长度块,剔除完全缺失块,剩余部分由可替换块编码器处理。采用无序块注意力机制,引入块级时间与导联嵌入,捕捉跨导联与时间依赖关系,无需插值。在PTB-XL上训练,并在七种模拟布局条件下评估,外部验证使用来自朝阳医院的400张真实心电图,涵盖三种临床布局。结果表明,PatchECG在所有模拟布局下的平均AUROC约为0.835;在朝阳队列中,房颤检测总体AUROC为0.778,12x1子集提升至0.893,分别优于预训练基线0.111和0.190。模型注意力与心脏病专家标注的一致性接近医师间一致性水平。结论:PatchECG为多种布局下数字化心电图提供了无需插值、可解释的鲁棒心律失常检测方案。其直接建模异步与部分缺失信号,结合临床对齐注意力,适用于真实世界中从遗留心电图档案开展心脏诊断。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Background: Electrocardiograms are indispensable for diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, yet in many settings they exist only as paper printouts stored in multiple recording layouts. Converting these images into digital signals introduces two key challenges: temporal asynchrony among leads and partial blackout missing, where contiguous signal segments become entirely unavailable. Existing models cannot adequately handle these concurrent problems while maintaining interpretability. Methods: We propose PatchECG, combining an adaptive variable block count missing learning mechanism with a masked training strategy. The model segments each lead into fixed-length patches, discards entirely missing patches, and encodes the remainder via a pluggable patch encoder. A disordered patch attention mechanism with patch-level temporal and lead embeddings captures cross-lead and temporal dependencies without interpolation. PatchECG was trained on PTB-XL and evaluated under seven simulated layout conditions, with external validation on 400 real ECG images from Chaoyang Hospital across three clinical layouts. Results: PatchECG achieves an average AUROC of approximately 0.835 across all simulated layouts. On the Chaoyang cohort, the model attains an overall AUROC of 0.778 for atrial fibrillation detection, rising to 0.893 on the 12x1 subset -- surpassing the pre-trained baseline by 0.111 and 0.190, respectively. Model attention aligns with cardiologist annotations at a rate approaching inter-clinician agreement. Conclusions: PatchECG provides a robust, interpolation-free, and interpretable solution for arrhythmia detection from digitized ECG images across diverse layouts. Its direct modeling of asynchronous and partially missing signals, combined with clinically aligned attention, positions it as a practical tool for cardiac diagnostics from legacy ECG archives in real-world clinical environments.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。