Sudden Cardiac Death Detection Methods Based on ECG Biometric Technologies

Sudden Cardiac Death Detection Methods Based on ECG Biometric Technologies Sudden cardiac death (SCD), which occurs when there is an abrupt loss of heart function, has caused millions of deaths worldwide. The aim of our study was to detect SCD occurrence and provide SCD warnings by using ECG biometric algorithms. Two methods of detection were analysed, comprising modified zero-crossing and wavelet based methods. An average heartbeat was generated for each person by randomly selecting 20 normal sequential heartbeats to become their heartbeat template. For the modified zero-crossing method, when the SCD event correlation coefficients dropped substantially because of waveform dissimilarity, the threshold for a suspected SCD event was set at 0.7. After the correlation coefficients dropped below the threshold, an IIR filter with a center frequency of 5 Hz and the zero-crossing method were applied to further verify SCD events. Overall, the results showed that our algorithm successfully detected up to 98.48% accuracy. The wavelet method detected SCD events by using template similarities and wavelet coefficient plots. The wavelet analysis was applied to detect SCD with an overall performance of a 92.31% correct detection rate. Hence, this study demonstrated the possibility of developing an all-in-one system for monitoring life-threatening heartbeats while protecting personal medical data.