Label noise-tolerant hidden Markov models for segmentation: application to ECGs

The performance of traditional classification models can adversely be impacted by the presence of label noise in training observations. The pioneer work of Lawrence and Scholkopf tackled this issue in datasets with independent observations by incorporating a statistical noise model within the inference algorithm. In this paper, the specific case of label noise in non-independent observations is rather considered. For this purpose, a label noise-tolerant expectation-maximisation algorithm is proposed in the frame of hidden Markov models. Experiments are carried on both healthy and pathological electrocardiogram signals with distinct types of additional artificial label noise. Results show that the proposed label noise-tolerant inference algorithm can improve the segmentation performances in the presence of label noise.