A deep neural network approach to QRS detection using autoencoders

Objective: In this paper, a stacked autoencoder deep neural network is proposed to extract the QRS complex from raw ECG signals without any conventional feature extraction phase. Methods: A simple architecture has been deeply trained on many datasets to ensure the generalization of the network at inference. Results: The proposed method achieved a QRS detection accuracy of 99.6% using more than 1042000 beats which is competitive with all state-of-the-art QRS detectors. Moreover, the proposed method produced only 0.82% of Detection Error Rate using six unseen datasets containing more than 1470000 beats. Thus confirms the high performance of our method to detect QRSs. Conclusion: Stacked autoencoder neural networks are very effective in QRS detection. At inference, our algorithm processes 1042309 beats in less than 25.32 s. Thus, it is favorably comparable with state-of-the-art deep learning methods. Significance: The stacked autoencoder is an efficient tool for QRS detection, which could replace conventional systems to help practitioners make fast and accurate decisions.