# Summarizing Cardiac Data: An Automated Approach for Identifying Representative Heartbeats in the Clinical Setting

> **NIH NIH R15** · UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA · 2022 · $375,373

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
With a constant stream of patient data generated at the hospital bedside, clinicians are asked to interpret this
data along with patient medical records and lab results in real time. The proposed project offers an approach to
automated clinical decision support (CDS) in parsing through some of this abundant data, focusing on the time
series summarization (TSS) of the electrocardiogram (ECG) and approximations to the related vectorcardiogram
(VCG) using techniques at the interface of data science and applied mathematics. Given the fact that bedside
monitor signals can be corrupted by noise, it is important to distinguish between noise/artifact, cardiac
arrhythmia, and normal cardiac rhythms; while the literature approaching such issues is growing, there is still a
need for addressing this problem for the pediatric population – especially for pediatric patients with electrical
conduction abnormalities as seen in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU). Through collaboration between
investigators at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) and at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas
Children’s Hospital (TCH), this project combines the application of deep learning algorithms and subset selection
techniques such as the discrete empirical interpolation method (DEIM) to classify and summarize data recorded
from the pediatric CICU at TCH. Specifically, the objective of this project is two-fold: (1) apply variational
autoencoders (VAEs) to differentiate between noise, arrhythmias, and normal sinus rhythm, and (2) evaluate
both existing and newly developed subset selection algorithms, with an added emphasis on DEIM-related
methods in application to cardiac data. Undergraduate students at UCO will evaluate VAE architectures for noise
detection, performing model selection and then applying the chosen model to patient data for further analysis.
Additional VAE models will be trained and selected for recognizing ECG and VCG waveforms containing
pathologies. VAE results will be compared to those generated using existing methods in the literature and will
inform the subsequent summarization of patient data. While DEIM has demonstrated viability in class-
identification tasks in prior work, DEIM and its related methods were originally developed for applications such
as mathematical model reduction, not class identification. For this reason, students will perform a necessary
comparison of DEIM-related methods applied to a variety of data types, giving particular attention to experiments
involving ECG waveforms; while doing so, students will also develop a novel extension of such methods tailored
to this specific medical context. In addition, the comparison of these techniques for class identification purposes
will offer valuable insight regarding DEIM-related methods to both the larger biomedical informatics and data
science communities. Once established, this TSS framework will provide a means of presenting to clinicians a
representation of...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10515222
- **Project number:** 1R15LM013938-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL OKLAHOMA
- **Principal Investigator:** Emily Hendryx Lyons
- **Activity code:** R15 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $375,373
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-08-02 → 2026-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10515222

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10515222, Summarizing Cardiac Data: An Automated Approach for Identifying Representative Heartbeats in the Clinical Setting (1R15LM013938-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10515222. Licensed CC0.

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