Empirical investigation of consensus clustering for large ECG data sets

This article investigates a novel machine learning approach applying consensus clustering in conjunction with classification for the data mining of very large and highly dimensional ECG data sets. To obtain robust and stable clusterings, consensus functions can be applied for clustering ensembles combining a multitude of independent initial clusterings. Direct applications of consensus functions to highly dimensional ECG data sets remain computationally expensive and impracticable. We introduce a multistage scheme including various procedures for dimensionality reduction, consensus clustering of randomized samples, followed by the use of a fast supervised classification algorithm. Applying the Hybrid Bipartite Graph Formulation combined with rank ordering and SMO we obtained an area under the receiver operating curve of 0.987. The performance of the classification algorithm at the final stage is crucial for the effectiveness of this technique. It can be regarded as an indication of the reliability, quality and stability of the combined consensus clustering.