Ensemble Learning-Based Pulse Signal Recognition: Classification Model Development Study

Background In pulse signal analysis and identification, time domain and time frequency domain analysis methods can obtain interpretable structured data and build classification models using traditional machine learning methods. Unstructured data, such as pulse signals, contain rich information about the state of the cardiovascular system, and local features of unstructured data can be extracted and classified using deep learning. Objective The objective of this paper was to comprehensively use machine learning and deep learning classification methods to fully exploit the information about pulse signals. Methods Structured data were obtained by using time domain and time frequency domain analysis methods. A classification model was built using a support vector machine (SVM), a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) kernel was used to extract local features of the unstructured data, and the stacking method was used to fuse the above classification results for decision making. Results The highest average accuracy of 0.7914 was obtained using only a single classifier, while the average accuracy obtained using the ensemble learning approach was 0.8330. Conclusions Ensemble learning can effectively use information from structured and unstructured data to improve classification accuracy through decision-level fusion. This study provides a new idea and method for pulse signal classification, which is of practical value for pulse diagnosis objectification.