Data Fusion of Multimodal Cardiovascular Signals

The electrocardiogram (ECG) is a representative signal containing useful information about the condition of the heart. The shape and size of the P-QRS-T wave, the R-R interval etc. may help to identify the nature of disease afflicting the heart. However, human observer can not directly monitor these subtle details. Hence, the fusion of ECG, blood pressure, saturated oxygen content and respiratory data for achieving improved clinical diagnosis of patients in cardiac care units. Therefore, computer based analysis and display, is highly useful in diagnostics. The study demonstrates the feasibility of fuzzy logic based data fusion of the heterogeneous signals for the detection of life threatening states. Important parameters are derived from multimodal data and rule based approaches have been used. Fuzzified region for various abnormality conditions have been obtained which demonstrate the efficacy of the approach in various test cases. Comprehensive pictures showing the condition of the patient in various states will help physician in making a timely assessment in an intensive care set up