Automatic electrocardiogram (ECG) signal enhancement has become a crucial pre-processing step in most ECG signal analysis applications. In this Letter, the authors propose an automated noise-aware dictionary learning-based generalised ECG signal enhancement framework which can automatically learn the dictionaries based on the ECG noise type for effective representation of ECG signal and noises, and can reduce the computational load of sparse representation-based ECG enhancement system. The proposed framework consists of noise detection and identification, noise-aware dictionary learning, sparse signal decomposition and reconstruction. The noise detection and identification is performed based on the moving average filter, first-order difference, and temporal features such as number of turning points, maximum absolute amplitude, zerocrossings, and autocorrelation features. The representation dictionary is learned based on the type of noise identified in the previous stage. The proposed framework is evaluated using noise-free and noisy ECG signals. Results demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly reduce computational load as compared with conventional dictionary learning-based ECG denoising approaches. Further, comparative results show that the method outperforms existing methods in automatically removing noises such as baseline wanders, power-line interference, muscle artefacts and their combinations without distorting the morphological content of local waves of ECG signal.

Automated health monitoring and alert system development is a demanding research area today. Most of the currently available monitoring and controlling medical devices are wired which limits freeness of working environment. Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a better alternative in such an environment. Neonatal intensive care unit is used to take care of sick and premature neonates. Hypothermia is an independent risk factor for neonatal mortality and morbidity. To prevent it an automated monitoring system is required. In this Letter, an automated neonatal health monitoring system is designed using sensor mobile cloud computing (SMCC). SMCC is based on WSN and MCC. In the authors’ system temperature sensor, acceleration sensor and heart rate measurement sensor are used to monitor body temperature, acceleration due to body movement and heart rate of neonates. The sensor data are stored inside the cloud. The health person continuously monitors and accesses these data through the mobile device using an Android Application for neonatal monitoring. When an abnormal situation arises, an alert is generated in the mobile device of the health person. By alerting health professional using such an automated system, early care is provided to the affected babies and the probability of recovery is increased.

Haemorrhages (HAs) presence in fundus images is one of the most important indicators of diabetic retinopathy that causes blindness. In this regard, accurate grading of HAs in fundus images is crucial for appropriate medical treatment. The purpose of this Letter is to assess the relative performance of statistical features obtained with three different multi-resolution analysis (MRA) techniques and fed to support vector machine in grading retinal HAs. Considered MRA techniques are the common discrete wavelet transform (DWT), empirical mode decomposition (EMD), and variational mode decomposition (VMD). The obtained experimental results show that statistical features obtained by EMD, VMD, and DWT, respectively, achieved 88.31% ± 0.0832, 71% ± 0.1782, and 64% ± 0.0949 accuracies. It also outperformed VMD and DWT in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Thus, the EMD-based features are promising for grading retinal HAs.

Variational mode decomposition (VMD) is a new adaptive multi-resolution technique suitable for signal denoising purpose. The main focus of this work has been to study the feasibility of several image denoising techniques in empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and VMD domains. A comparative study is made using 11 techniques widely used in the literature, including Wiener filter, first-order local statistics, fourth partial differential equation, nonlinear complex diffusion process, linear complex diffusion process (LCDP), probabilistic non-local means, non-local Euclidean medians, non-local means, non-local patch regression, discrete wavelet transform and wavelet packet transform. On the basis of comparison of 396 denoising based on peak signal-to-noise ratio, it is found that the best performances are obtained in VMD domain when appropriate denoising techniques are applied. Particularly, it is found that LCDP in combination with VMD performs the best and that VMD is faster than EMD.

In this letter, the authors propose a new entropy measure for analysis of time series. This measure is termed as the state space correlation entropy (SSCE). The state space reconstruction is used to evaluate the embedding vectors of a time series. The SSCE is computed from the probability of the correlations of the embedding vectors. The performance of SSCE measure is evaluated using both synthetic and real valued signals. The experimental results reveal that, the proposed SSCE measure along with SVM classifier have sensitivity value of 91.60%, which is higher than the performance of both sample entropy and permutation entropy features for detection of shockable ventricular arrhythmia.

The rapid development of driver fatigue detection technology indicates important significance of traffic safety. The authors’ main goals of this Letter are principally three: (i) A middleware architecture, defined as process unit (PU), which can communicate with personal electroencephalography (EEG) node (PEN) and cloud server (CS). The PU receives EEG signals from PEN, recognises the fatigue state of the driver, and transfer this information to CS. The CS sends notification messages to the surrounding vehicles. (ii) An android application for fatigue detection is built. The application can be used for the driver to detect the state of his/her fatigue based on EEG signals, and warn neighbourhood vehicles. (iii) The detection algorithm for driver fatigue is applied based on fuzzy entropy. The idea of 10-fold cross-validation and support vector machine are used for classified calculation. Experimental results show that the average accurate rate of detecting driver fatigue is about 95%, which implying that the algorithm is validity in detecting state of driver fatigue.

Electroencephalography (EEG) captures electrophysiological signatures of cortical events from the scalp with high-dimensional electrode montages. Usually, excessive sources produce outliers and potentially affect the actual event related sources. Besides, EEG manifests inherent inter-subject variability of the brain dynamics, at the resting state and/or under the performance of task(s), caused probably due to the instantaneous fluctuation of psychophysiological states. A wavelet coherence (WC) analysis for optimally selecting associative inter-subject channels is proposed here and is being used to boost performances of motor imagery (MI)-based inter-subject brain computer interface (BCI). The underlying hypothesis is that optimally associative inter-subject channels can reduce the effects of outliers and, thus, eliminate dissimilar cortical patterns. The proposed approach has been tested on the dataset IVa from BCI competition III, including EEG data acquired from five healthy subjects who were given visual cues to perform 280 trials of MI for the right hand and right foot. Experimental results have shown increased classification accuracy (81.79%) using the WC-based selected 16 channels compared to the one (56.79%) achieved using all the available 118 channels. The associative channels lie mostly around the sensorimotor regions of the brain, reinforced by the previous literature, describing spatial brain dynamics during sensorimotor oscillations. Apparently, the proposed approach paves the way for optimised EEG channel selection that could boost further the efficiency and real-time performance of BCI systems.

Vibration stimulation as an exercise intervention has been studied increasingly for its potential benefits and applications in sports and rehabilitation. Vibratory exercise devices should be capable of generating highly precise and repeatable vibrations and should be capable of generating a range of vibration amplitudes and frequencies in order to provide different training protocols. Many devices used to exercise the upper body provide limited variations to exercise regimes mostly due to the fact that only vibration frequency can be controlled. The authors present an upper limb vibration exercise device with a novel actuator system and design which attempts to address these limitations. Preliminary results show that this device is capable of generating highly precise and repeatable vibrations with independent control over amplitude and frequency. Furthermore, the results also show that this solution provides a higher neuromuscular stimulation (i.e. electromyography activity) when compared with a control condition. The portability of this device is an advantage, and though in its current configuration it may not be suitable for applications requiring higher amplitude levels the technology is scalable.