Bimodal ECG and PCG Cardiovascular Disease Detection: Exploring the Potential and Modality Contribution.

Early detection of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is crucial for improving patient outcomes and alleviating healthcare burdens. Electrocardiograms (ECGs) and phonocardiograms (PCGs) offer low-cost, non-invasive, and easily integrable solutions for preventive care settings. In this work, we propose a...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Medical Systems Vol. 49; no. 1; pp. 1 - 12
Autores principales: Calzoni, Alessia, Savardi, Mattia, Silvestri, Marco, Benini, Sergio, Signoroni, Alberto
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Springer Nature 9/12/2025
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=187971626&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: ccm
    uiTerm: 187971626
    longDbName: CINAHL Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    dissinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        01485598
        4N0
      jtl: Journal of Medical Systems
      issn: 01485598
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: 9/12/2025
      vid: 49
      iid: 1
      pid: 237
      pub: Springer Nature
      place: New York, New York
    artinfo:
      ui:
        187971626
        187971626
        187971626
        10.1007/s10916-025-02245-5
        187971626
      ppf: 1
      ppct: 11
      formats:
        fmt:
          – @attributes:
              type: T
          – @attributes:
              type: P
      tig:
        atl: Bimodal ECG and PCG Cardiovascular Disease Detection: Exploring the Potential and Modality Contribution.
      aug:
        au:
          Calzoni, Alessia
          Savardi, Mattia
          Silvestri, Marco
          Benini, Sergio
          Signoroni, Alberto
        affil: https://ror.org/02q2d2610 Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123, Brescia, Italy
      sug:
        subj:
          Cardiovascular Diseases Diagnosis
          Electrocardiography Methods
          Early Diagnosis
          Audiorecording
          Deep Learning
          Convolutional Neural Networks
          Human
          Funding Source
          Comparative Studies
          Exploratory Research
          Descriptive Statistics
          Signal Processing, Computer Assisted
          Quality Improvement
          Heart Rate
          Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test
          Confidence Intervals
          Sensitivity and Specificity
      ab: Early detection of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) is crucial for improving patient outcomes and alleviating healthcare burdens. Electrocardiograms (ECGs) and phonocardiograms (PCGs) offer low-cost, non-invasive, and easily integrable solutions for preventive care settings. In this work, we propose a novel bimodal deep learning model that combines ECG and PCG signals to enhance the early detection of CVDs. To address the challenge of limited bimodal data, we fine-tuned a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) pre-trained on large-scale audio recordings, leveraging all publicly available unimodal PCG datasets. This PCG branch was then integrated with a 1D-CNN ECG branch via late fusion. Evaluated on an augmented version of MITHSDB, currently the only publicly available bimodal dataset, our approach achieved an AUROC of 96.4%, significantly outperforming ECG-only and PCG-only models by approximately 3%pts and 11%pts, respectively. To interpret the model's decisions, we applied three explainability techniques, quantifying the relative contributions of the electrical and acoustic features. Furthermore, by projecting the learned embeddings into two dimensions using UMAP, we revealed clear separation between normal and pathological samples. Our results conclusively demonstrate that combining ECG and PCG modalities yields substantial performance gains, with explainability and visualization providing critical insights into model behavior. These findings underscore the importance of multimodal approaches for CVDs diagnosis and prevention, and strongly motivate the collection of larger, more diverse bimodal datasets for future research.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
    refInfo:
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N