Deep Learning Ultra Low-Frequency Heart Rate Variability from raw ECG

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Lay Summary:This project will use new "Machine Learning" technologies to analyse Heart Rate Variability.If someone says, "my heart beats steady as a rock", they probably need to be told that this is a warning of the increased likelihood of an impending heart attack. In contrast to many people's intuition, a healthy heart does not beat steadily like a rock (do rocks even beat?) or a metronome, but with an irregular beat. This natural and healthy variation between heartbeats is known as "Heart Rate Variability" (HRV) and is widely measured in sports and medicine, but the causes of the variability are not well understood. In this study, we will develop novel software to facilitate analysis of this irregularity and gain a better understanding of the biology behind it.The heart does have an inbuilt pacemaker that beats with an apparently steady rhythm throughout adult life, but on top of this regular beat, there are two well characterised subconscious mechanisms that can accelerate or decelerate the heart-beat. The behaviour of these two modulatory mechanisms has been extensively studied and causes the heartbeat to change in the second by second or minute by minute timeframe. However, the heartbeat also changes over the course of hours or days and technical limitations have made this very difficult, if not impossible to study at this level of detail in the past. Essentially, human selection and inspection of clean strips of ECG traces was necessary and this was impractical for very large datasets. In the case of rodent ECG traces, it would mean visually inspecting over a million heartbeats per day! We believe that we can make use of new computer and software developments to study the long-term changes in HRV. Specifically "deep learning" a so-called artificial network, and major type of modern artificial intelligence (AI). This is similar software to that allowing Alexa or Siri to answer verbal commands in the latest smart devices. In this project, we will develop this type of software to assist with long-range ECG analysis and use further modern computer models to infer the biological mechanisms underlying this long-term HRV.The applications for our software would be widespread, from health monitoring in people and pets and in fitness monitoring in sports people. Since changes in the way the heart is controlled are a major risk factor in ageing, distribution of such software will benefit the healthy ageing agenda.