Objective: This paper aims to prove that automatic beat classification on ECG signals can be effectively solved with a pure knowledge-based approach, using an appropriate set of abstract features obtained from the interpretation of the physiological processes underlying the signal.
Methods: A set of qualitative morphological and rhythm features are obtained for each heartbeat as a result of the abductive interpretation of the ECG. Then, a QRS clustering algorithm is applied in order to reduce the effect of possible errors in the interpretation. Finally, a rule-based classifier assigns a tag to each cluster.
Results: The method has been tested with the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database records, showing a significantly better performance than any other automatic approach in the state-of-the-art, and even improving most of the assisted approaches that require the intervention of an expert in the process.
Conclusion: The most relevant issues in ECG classification, related to a large extent to the variability of the signal patterns between different subjects and even in the same subject over time, will be overcome by changing the reasoning paradigm.
Significance: This paper demonstrates the power of an abductive framework for time-series interpretation to make a qualitative leap in the significance of the information extracted from the ECG by automatic methods.