Abstract
Photopletysmography (PPG) is a non-invasive and well known technology that enables the recording of the digital volume pulse (DVP). Although PPG is largely employed in research, several aspects remain unknown. One of these is represented by the lack of information about how many waveform classes best express the variability in shape. In the literature, it is common to classify DVPs into four classes based on the dicrotic notch position. However, when working with real data, labelling waveforms with one of these four classes is no longer straightforward and may be challenging. The correct identification of the DVP shape could enhance the precision and the reliability of the extracted bio markers. In this work we proposed unsupervised machine learning and deep learning approaches to overcome the data labelling limitations. Concretely we performed a K-medoids based clustering that takes as input 1) DVP handcrafted features, 2) similarity matrix computed with the Derivative Dynamic Time Warping and 3) DVP features extracted from a CNN AutoEncoder. All the cited methods have been tested first by imposing four medoids representative of the Dawber classes, and after by automatically searching four clusters. We then searched the optimal number of clusters for each method using silhouette score, the prediction strength and inertia. To validate the proposed approaches we analyse the dissimilarities in the clinical data related to obtained clusters.
1 Introduction
The photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal contains precious information about the blood vessels and heart activity. The digital volume pulse (DVP) is defined as the portion of PPG signal corresponding to one cardiac cycle. In young individuals, the DVP exhibits clearly defined systolic and diastolic peaks. The diastolic peak is attenuated with increasing age (). The systolic peak is related to the forward pressure wave from the heart to the finger. The diastolic wave, also called the reflected wave, depends on the amount of reflection (due to muscular tone) in small arteries (). DVP shape changes with age (), blood pressure (), atherosclerosis (), and other cardiovascular diseases such as arrhythmia () and coronary artery disease (). DVP wave shapes vary between subjects and with the presence of pathologies. It can be used to assess a variety of cardiovascular properties, such as estimating blood pressure (), detecting diabetes (Zanelli et al., 2022), or assessing vascular ageing (). An understanding of typical DVP wave shapes could contribute to the physiological interpretation of wave shapes, and could help in the development of robust DVP wave analysis algorithms. Most of the DVP biomarkers extraction algorithms assume that DVPs have a standardized shape. However real DVPs can show more than one peak. In this case, the biomarker cannot be computed directly but a suitable pre-processing has to be applied to the wave in order to obtain an estimation. For our knowledge very few studies address the DVP shape morphology classification topic.
In 1973, defined four classes of DVP shape based on the characteristics of the dicrotic notch (Figure 1). The four classes range from a visible and clearly marked dicrotic notch (Class 1) to a non visible dicrotic notch (Class 4). However, DVPs exhibit far more shape variations than are captured in the characteristics of the dicrotic notch. Other attempts have been made to identify typical DVP wave shapes: frequency analysis to classify the DVPs into three classes based on the age (); machine learning and deep learning methods trained over handcrafted features to classify the DVPs shape into the four classes proposed by Dawber et al. (); and second derivative analysis used to obtain four DVP templates (). Wang et al., 2013 proposed a multi-Gaussian fitting to classify DVPs into five classes. With respect to Dawber et al., they introduced an intermediate class where no notch develops but there is a notable reflected wave in the systolic component of the pulse wave. The main limitation of these studies is the pre-emptive choice of the number of DVP classes.
FIGURE 1
We used non-supervised approaches to identify clusters of DVP wave shapes as follows. First, we investigated different approaches for clustering DVP waves with the aim of identifying the best approach. K-medoids clustering was used to cluster DVP wave shapes based on: 1) handcrafted DVP features; 2) Derivative Dynamic Time Warping (DDTW) distances; or (iii) features extracted from a convolutional neural network autoencoder (CNN AE). K-medoids was used instead of K-means as it is less affected by outliers, and it guarantees that each medoid (the DVP shape representing the entire cluster) is an actual DVP (
). Second, we investigated whether the optimal number of clusters is four, as suggested by Dawber et al., or a different number. To do so, all the clustering methods were tested when the number of clusters was fixed to four (with and without fixing the medoids to DVP waves typical of Dawber’s four classes), and when the optimal number of clusters was determined through one of: the prediction strength method (
); the silhouette score (
); or clusters inertia (
). Third, we investigated whether any of the obtained clusters were clinically relevant. To do so, we analysed the related clinical data for each cluster to assess whether there were significant differences between clusters. The dataset used in this study contained approximately 11,000 DVPs from 300 subjects aged 20–80 years old. Our contributions can be summarized as follows.
• We clustered DVP waves using a K-medoids approach with three different feature sets. We compared the results obtained with 1) a dataset composed by fourteen PPG handcrafted features, 2) a dataset composed by DDTW pairwise distances and 3) a dataset composed by features automatically extracted from a CNN autoencoder.
• We tested the proposed approaches with four clusters to compare the obtained results with the Dawber et al. classes. Then, we investigated the optimal number of clusters using the silhouette score, inertia and the prediction strength methods. The approaches have been also tested by imposing four representative medoids, selected by a human expert.
• We investigate whether or not the obtained clusters are clinically relevant by analysing the distribution of the clinical data associated with each cluster.
2 Material and methods
2.1 Dataset
The dataset used in this study contains PPG signals recorded from 300 different subjects, providing a total of about 11,057 DVPs. Table 1 presents the subject characteristics: the subjects ranged from 19 to 83 years old; and included normotensives, hypertensives and hypotensives. Figure 2 represents the age distribution of the dataset. The PPG signals were acquired at 1 kHz with the pOpmètre device (Axelife, France) (
TABLE 1
| Feature | Mean (± std) | Min | Max |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age[years] | 44.31 ± 14.34 | 19.48 | 83.00 |
| Weight[kg] | 74.60 ± 16.99 | 45.00 | 180.00 |
| Height[cm] | 170.04 ± 8.45 | 140.00 | 196.00 |
| PWV[m/s] | 7.99 ± 2.91 | 3.70 | 26.10 |
| PAS[mmHg] | 124.77 ± 16.01 | 90.00 | 190.00 |
| PAD[mmHg] | 76.10 ± 9.73 | 48.00 | 120.00 |
| BMI[kg/m2] | 25.78 ± 5.12 | 6.00 | 56.00 |
| BPM[bpm] | 71.82 ± 14.89 | 40.00 | 185.00 |
Clinical data. Mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values of the clinical data related to the used DVPs dataset.
FIGURE 2

Age distribution of the used dataset.
The dataset was split into train and test sets using 70% and 30% of the available data respectively. Since one subject can have different DVP shapes along the same measurement, one subject can contribute to the train, validation or test set at the same time. The validation set is composed of 30% of the training test. The same train, validation and test sets were used with all the proposed methods in order to be able to compare the results. The train and validation sets were used to train the CNN AE while the test set was used for clustering.
2.2 Clustering pulse waves
The K-medoids technique was used to cluster DVP waves. K-medoids is a partitional algorithm firstly proposed in 1980 (
2.2.1 Using handcrafted features
Clustering was performed using twenty one handcrafted features were extracted from the DVPs contained in the dataset. The features include those proposed in the literature to assess DVP morphology (
TABLE 2
| Feature | Abb | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Dicrotic-diastolic notch | DDR | Ratio between dicrotic notch and diastolic peak amplitude. Set to 1.1 if no diastolic point is detected |
| Relative downslope sum | RDS | Area under the curve from the maximum descendet slope to the end of the pulse |
| Downslope derivative mean | DDM | Mean value of the pulse derivative after the systolic peak |
| Skewness | Skew | Measure of the pulse asymmetry |
| Max second derivative | P_b_2Dev_A | First minimum amplitude of the second derivative |
| Index min second derivative | P_b_2Dev_i | Index of the first minimum amplitude of the second derivative |
| Min second derivative | P_a_2Dev_A | Maximum amplitude of the second derivative |
| Index max second derivative | P_a_2Dev_i | Index of the maximum amplitude of the second derivative |
| Integral of the curve | S_P_Onde | Total area under the curve |
| Number of peaks | nbr_peaks | Number of peaks inside the pulse |
| Logarithm of Rise time | log (RT) | Logarithm of the rise time |
| Logarithm of Kurtosis | log (Kurt) | Logartimic measure of the “tailedness” |
| Augmentation index | AI_bin | Augmentation index, binary variable. If augmentation index could be computed the variable has high value |
| Down slope derivative variance | log (DDV) | Logarithm of the variance of the pulse derivative variance during the down slope |
DVPs features used for clustering with the handcrafted DVP feature approach. Abb: feature name abbreviation.
2.2.2 Using dynamic time warping
Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) is an algorithm employed to estimate the similarity between two time series (
The DTW similarity measure is computed as the minimal cost of aligning the two time series as described in Algorithm 1 (
Algorithm 1
Require: n, m ≥ 0
int DTW[0..n, 0..m]
int i, j, cost
s: array [1..n], t: array [1..m]
for i ≔ 1 to n do
for j ≔ 1 to m do
DTW[i, j] ≔ infinity
endfor
endfor
DTW[0, 0] ≔ 0
for i ≔ 1 to n do
for j ≔ 1 to m do
cost≔ abs(s[i] - t[j])
DTW[i, j] ≔ cost + minimum(DTW[i-1, j ], DTW[i , j-1], DTW[i-1, j-1])
endfor
endfor
return DTW[n, m]
FIGURE 3

Dynamic time warping and derivative dynamic time warping comparison. It is observable how DDTW is able to match the same shape modifications with respect to the DTW that matches points that have low relative distance.
2.2.3 Convolutional neural network autoencoder
A Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) AutoEncoder model was used to automatically extract features from DVP waves (
TABLE 3
| Layers | Output shape |
|---|---|
| Encoder | |
| Input layer | (None, 100) |
| Convolution layer | (None,100,32) |
| MaxPooling | (None,50,32) |
| Convolution layer | (None,50,32) |
| MaxPooling | (None,25,32) |
| Convolution layer | (None,25,32) |
| MaxPooling | (None,13,32) |
| Flatten | (None,416) |
| Dense | (None,8) |
| Decoder | |
| Dense | (None,8) |
| Dense | (None,416) |
| Reshape | (None,13,32) |
| Convolution layer | (None,26,32) |
| Cropping | (None,25,32) |
| UpSampling | (None,50,32) |
| Convolution layer | (None,50,32) |
| UpSampling | (None,100,32) |
| Convolution layer | (None,100,32) |
| Flatten | (None,3,200) |
| Dense | (None,100) |
CNN AutoEncoder architecture.
2.3 Investigating the optimal number of clusters
We employed three different methods to investigate the optimal number of clusters: the silhouette score (
The silhouette score is calculated by taking into account the mean intra-cluster distance a, and the distance between a sample and the nearest cluster that the sample is not a part of b. The silhouette score s for a sample is:The score is then averaged over all samples. This score measures how well a dataset sample i matches the chosen clustering scheme. A score of 1 means the samples are correctly clustered, a score of 0 means the samples could belong to other clusters, and a score of −1 means that the cluster contains the wrong samples.
The prediction strength of the clustering C(Xtr, k) is a defined as:where nk,j is the number of observations in the jth cluster, D[C(Xtr, k), Xte] is the co-membership matrix of size (Xtr (train set), Xte (test set)) and C(Xtr, k) is the clustering algorithm fitted to the training set. In other words, for each test cluster, the proportion of observation pairs in that cluster that are also assigned to the same cluster by the training set centroids is computed. The prediction strength is the minimum of this quantity over the k test clusters. The maximum number of clusters for which the prediction strength is above a certain threshold is then chosen. Although the experiments ran by the authors suggest 0.8–0.9 as a good value for the threshold, the latter may be interpreted on a case-by-case basis.
The cluster inertia was computed as follows:where N is the number of samples within the data set and C is the center of a cluster. It computes the sum of squared distance of each sample in a cluster to its cluster center.
We have to highlight that, although we tested three different methods to investigate the optimal number of clusters, the final choice of the optimal number of clusters is still affected by personal interpretation.
2.4 Investigating the clinical relevance of obtained clusters
The clinical relevance of the clustering was investigated as follows.
The Kruskal Wallis test (
Since significant differences were found between the clinical parameters of different clusters when using all the clustering approaches, we also conducted a more in-depth analysis of differences. Here, we propose a technique to identify which methods better discriminate the clinical data distribution among the clusters. Inspired by core shape modelling (
3 Results and discussion
In this section we present and discuss the obtained DVP clusters. First, we compare results obtained using the baseline approach and the template approach to understand whether the clusters of DVP waves are similar to Dawber’s classes. Second, we present the results obtained using each of the three methods for identifying the optimal number of clusters. Finally, we assess the clinical relevance of the obtained clusters.
Clusters were visualised using a nonlinear dimensionality reduction method: the t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) (Van der Maaten and Hinton, 2008). This method provides a faithful lower-dimensional representation where the distribution of the original data is conserved also in the lower dimension representation. It achieves this by modeling the dataset with a dimension-agnostic probability distribution, finding a lower-dimensional approximation with a closely matching distribution (
3.1 Comparing with Dawber’s classes
This section presents the results of clustering the dataset into four clusters using each of the three clustering methods: handcrafted features, CNN AE automated features, and the DDTW similarity matrix. We chose four clusters to allow comparison with the DVP shapes proposed by Dawber et al. In a first (baseline) approach each method was used to automatically identify the four clusters. In a second (template) approach, the medoids of the four clusters were imposed as DVP waves selected by an expert to correspond to the four classes identified by Dawber et al. We iteratively computed the assignments of the pulses to the clusters.
The results are shown in Figure 6, where the top row shows the template approach, and the middle row shows the baseline approach. Dawber’s classes (top row) were designed based on differences in dicrotic notch characteristics. The medoid DVP waves automatically identified in the DDTW baseline approach are most similar to Dawber’s classes: cluster 1 (corresonding to the youngest subjects as observed in Figure 7) exhibits a marked dicrotic notch (similar to Dawber’s class 1), which gradually disappears in older subjects (clusters 0, 2, and 3 respectively, corresponding to Dawber’s classes 2, 3, and 4) (see Figure 6). The clusters automatically identified when using the CNN autoencoder method are less similar to Dawber’s classes, and those identified when using handcrafted features are even less similar still.
The number of DVP waves in each cluster was less balanced when imposing Dawber’s classes as medoids than when automatically identifying medoids (see Table 4). For instance, when using handcrafted features, the proportion of DVP waves allocated to each cluster ranged from 3% to 43% when prescribing Dawber’s template classes, compared to 20%–33% when allowing cluster medoids to be identified automatically. There were similar imbalances when using CNN autoencoder features, and DDTW.
TABLE 4
| Features | Handcrafted | CNN | DDTW | Handcrafted | CNN | DDTW | Handcrafted | CNN | DDTW |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | Template | Baseline | Optimal | ||||||
| Cluster 0 | 746 | 656 | 1,506 | 803 | 701 | 1,161 | 495 | 714 | 172 |
| % | 20 | 18 | 41 | 22 | 19 | 32 | 14 | 20 | 5 |
| Cluster 1 | 1,230 | 1,602 | 247 | 920 | 854 | 1,087 | 584 | 351 | 601 |
| % | 34 | 44 | 7 | 25 | 23 | 30 | 16 | 10 | 16 |
| Cluster 2 | 1,580 | 1,151 | 1,354 | 734 | 998 | 878 | 743 | 642 | 780 |
| % | 43 | 32 | 37 | 20 | 27 | 24 | 20 | 18 | 21 |
| Cluster 3 | 87 | 234 | 536 | 1,186 | 1,090 | 520 | 606 | 342 | 345 |
| % | 2 | 6 | 15 | 33 | 30 | 14 | 17 | 9 | 9 |
| Cluster 4 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 539 | 452 | 725 |
| % | 15 | 12 | 20 | ||||||
| Cluster 5 | - | - | - | - | - | - | 676 | 579 | 635 |
| % | 19 | 16 | 17 | ||||||
| Cluster 6 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 563 | 388 |
| % | 15 | 11 | |||||||
| Total waves | 3,643 | 3,643 | 3,643 | 3,643 | 3,643 | 3,646 | 3,643 | 3,643 | 3,646 |
Number of DVPs in each cluster and for each proposed method.
The clusters identified using DDTW not only exhibited differences in dicrotic notch characteristics (similarly to Dawber’s classes) but also exhibit changes in the characteristics of the systolic portion of the DVP wave (see Figure 6): the systolic peak becomes wider with age (i.e., from cluster 1 to 0, 2, and 3), and the secondary systolic wave disappears with age. This secondary systolic wave could be a reflected wave caused by the elasticity of the artery (
3.2 Determining the optimal number of clusters
In order to determine the optimal number of clusters, we computed the silhouette score, the inertia and the prediction strength of the proposed approaches (see Section 2.3). Whilst these methods do require some subjective interpretation, using multiple methods allowed us to reduce the level of subjectivity. The computational cost of applying the prediction strength to the DDTW matrix was found to be high resulting in an extremely long runtime (>10 days) requiring, in our opinion, a non-justifiable amount of resources (
Figure 4 shows the results for the three approaches when varying the number of clusters from 1 to 15. Silhouette score and inertia have been used jointly to select the optimal number of clusters. We searched in the results a number of cluster k, for which the obtained silhouette score was close to 1 and the inertia presented an elbow. The selected number of clusters was then compared with the obtained prediction strength analysis. Based on these results, we chose not to use a threshold of 0.8 for the prediction strength because it would have been too restrictive. The optimal number of clusters was determined as 6, 7, and 7 clusters for the handcrafted feature, the CNN AE, and the DDTW approaches respectively.
FIGURE 4

Prediction strength, inertia and silhouette score for clusters k = [1, 15] for handcrafted and CNN AE approach. Inertia and silhouette score for clusters k = [1, 15] for DDTW approach. Black dotted line: chosen number of clusters.
3.3 Determining the optimal clustering method
The t-SNE visualisations (Figure 5) help determine which clustering approach best separates DVP waves into clusters. The DDTW approach appears to better separate the clusters when using the template, baseline, or optimal approaches. However, we can observe from the medoids plot (Figure 6) some clusters appear to be very similar in all of the three proposed approaches. We used the intra-cluster inertia to further investigate the performance of different clustering approaches (see Figure 4). The intra-cluster inertia was lowest for the DDTW approach (approximately 0.2), and substantially higher for the other approaches (approximately 0.4 for the CNN autoencoder approach, and 0.5 for the handcrafted features approach). Based on this, we suggest that the DDTW clustering approach performed best in this study.
FIGURE 5

t-SNE clustering representation of all the proposed approaches. From the top to the bottom: template, baseline and optimal approach. From the left to the right: handcrafted, CNN AE and automated features.
FIGURE 6

Medoids (dark green) and DVPs (light green) for all the proposed approaches. From the top to the bottom: template, baseline and optimal approach. From the left to the right: handcrafted, CNN AE and automated features.
3.4 Investigating the clinical relevance of clusters
Clustering a dataset composed of real DVPs with no prior information about the possible optimal number of clusters, can be challenging. The main difficulty is represented by the impossibility of validating a certain approach. In this work, we used the clinical data related to the DVPs to validate and score the proposed approaches. To visualize the clinical data related to the clustered DVPs, we employed the radar plot in Figure 7. These plots represent the average value of each clinical parameter for each cluster. From visual inspection it is clear that almost all the clustering approaches result in clusters which are associated with differences in clinical parameters. To quantify this, we first performed statistical tests to assess whether there were significant differences between the clinical data for each cluster. Significant differences were found between clusters obtained using all the approaches. To investigate which method is able to better differentiate the clinical data related to the clusters we implemented a modified version of the CSM approach (
FIGURE 7

Radar plot for all the proposed approaches representing the average value of the clinical data related to the clustered DVPs. From the top to the bottom: template, baseline and optimal approach. From the left to the right: handcrafted, CNN AE and automated features.
TABLE 5
| Variable | Distance | Method | Variable | Distance | Method | Variable | Distance | Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age | 0.19 | CNN AE baseline | 0.05 | BMI | CNN AE template | 0.05 | BPM | CNN AE baseline |
| Age | 0.18 | DDTW baseline | 0.05 | BMI | CNN AE baseline | 0.04 | BPM | DDTW baseline |
| Age | 0.17 | CNN AE template | 0.05 | BMI | DDTW baseline | 0.04 | BPM | CNN AE template |
| Age | 0.17 | Handcrafted template | 0.04 | BMI | Handcrafted template | 0.03 | BPM | Handcrafted template |
| Age | 0.17 | Handcrafted baseline | 0.04 | BMI | Handcrafted baseline | 0.03 | BPM | Handcrafted baseline |
| Age | 0.08 | DDTW template | 0.03 | BMI | DDTW template | 0.03 | BPM | DDTW template |
| Age | 0.07 | Handcrafted optimal | 0.02 | BMI | Handcrafted optimal | 0.02 | BPM | Handcrafted optimal |
| Age | 0.05 | CNN AE optimal | 0.01 | BMI | CNN AE optimal | 0.01 | BPM | CNN AE optimal |
| Age | 0.05 | DDTW optimal | 0.01 | BMI | DDTW optimal | 0.01 | BPM | DDTW optimal |
| Height | 0.06 | Handcrafted baseline | 0.08 | PAD | CNN AE template | 0.09 | PAS | CNN AE baseline |
| Height | 0.06 | CNN AE baseline | 0.08 | PAD | CNN AE baseline | 0.09 | PAS | CNN AE template |
| Height | 0.06 | CNN AE template | 0.07 | PAD | Handcrafted template | 0.08 | PAS | DDTW baseline |
| Height | 0.06 | Handcrafted template | 0.07 | PAD | DDTW baseline | 0.08 | PAS | Handcrafted template |
| Height | 0.05 | DDTW baseline | 0.06 | PAD | Handcrafted baseline | 0.07 | PAS | Handcrafted baseline |
| Height | 0.02 | Handcrafted optimal | 0.03 | PAD | DDTW template | 0.03 | PAS | DDTW template |
| Height | 0.02 | DDTW template | 0.03 | PAD | Handcrafted optimal | 0.03 | PAS | Handcrafted optimal |
| Height | 0.02 | CNN AE optimal | 0.02 | PAD | CNN AE optimal | 0.02 | PAS | CNN AE optimal |
| Height | 0.01 | DDTW optimal | 0.02 | PAD | DDTW optimal | 0.02 | PAS | DDTW optimal |
| TT | 0.17 | DDTW baseline | 0.09 | PWV | DDTW baseline | 0.05 | Weight | DDTW baseline |
| TT | 0.17 | CNN AE baseline | 0.09 | PWV | CNN AE baseline | 0.05 | Weight | CNN AE template |
| TT | 0.16 | Handcrafted template | 0.09 | PWV | Handcrafted baseline | 0.05 | Weight | CNN AE baseline |
| TT | 0.16 | CNN AE template | 0.09 | PWV | CNN AE template | 0.04 | Weight | Handcrafted template |
| TT | 0.15 | Handcrafted baseline | 0.08 | PWV | Handcrafted template | 0.03 | Weight | DDTW template |
| TT | 0.07 | DDTW template | 0.04 | PWV | DDTW template | 0.03 | Weight | Handcrafted baseline |
| TT | 0.06 | Handcrafted optimal | 0.03 | PWV | Handcrafted optimal | 0.02 | Weight | Handcrafted optimal |
| TT | 0.05 | DDTW optimal | 0.03 | PWV | DDTW optimal | 0.02 | Weight | CNN AE optimal |
| TT | 0.05 | CNN AE optimal | 0.03 | PWV | CNN AE optimal | 0.02 | Weight | DDTW optimal |
PDF distances for each clinical data for each proposed method. The larger is the scored distance the better the method is able to cluster DVPs in a clinical relevant manner. The methods are scored, for each clinical data, from the best to the poorest.
4 Conclusion
In this work we investigated several unsupervised approaches to cluster DVPs. We wanted to address whether or not a dataset composed of real DVPs can be described by 4 classes based on the dicrotic notch position, as previously reported by Dawber et al.
Our results indicate that DVP wave shapes do differ due to their dicrotic notch characteristics. However, there are additional differences such as width of the systolic peak and the strength of a secondary systolic wave. Investigating the optimal number of clusters with the help of methods such as inertia, silhouette score and prediction strength, we found 7 clusters of DVP wave shapes. Whilst these methods do require some subjective interpretation, using multiple methods allowed us to reduce the level of subjectivity.
The DDTW clustering approach performed best in this study, providing better separation between clusters than using either handcrafted features, or a CNN autoencoder approach. The DDTW approach takes into account the shape of the DVP wave by applying DTW to the first derivative of the DVP wave, and may therefore confer benefit over the previously proposed approach of applying DTW to the original DVP wave.
The different clusters of DVP waves correspond to different clinical characteristics. The clustering revealed that DVP wave shape was primarily associated with pulse transit time and age, which is in accordance with other studies Yousef et al. (2012);
Further improvements will focus on improving the measure of similarity d to assess differences in the probability density function by taking into consideration the distance between the averaged clinical values, the standard deviation and the variability among clusters. Other methods such as Gaussian and exponential modelling will be taken into consideration to extract relevant features from the DVP. In order to test the presented approach on a public dataset for comparison, it would be very helpful if public PPG datasets were created which contain PPG signals alongside reference cardiovascular measurements such as systolic blood pressure, pulse wave velocity and generic data such as age, weight and BMI.
Statements
Data availability statement
The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because they are private datasets. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to magid@axelife.com.
Ethics statement
The studies involving humans were approved by the cohort register referenced BS-004—University Hospital of Nice. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
SZ, KE, ME, MA, and MH contributed to conception and design of the study. SZ performed the clustering and wrote the manuscript. KE performed the statistical analysis. PC selected the DVPs templates and helped with the physiological interpretation of the results. ME confirmed the results and shaped the article’s focus. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Acknowledgments
PHC acknowledges funding from the British Heart foundation [FS/20/20/34626]. This article is based upon work from COST ACTION “Network for Research in Vascular Ageing” CA18216 supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology): www.cost.eu.
Conflict of interest
KE was employed by Axelife. SZ collaborates with Axelife, a company that designs and develops PPG-based medical devices. MH has authored patents used by Axelife and was the president of Axelife.
The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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Summary
Keywords
PPG, waveform, classification, machine learning, deep learning, unsupervised learning
Citation
Zanelli S, Eveilleau K, Charlton PH, Ammi M, Hallab M and El Yacoubi MA (2023) Clustered photoplethysmogram pulse wave shapes and their associations with clinical data. Front. Physiol. 14:1176753. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2023.1176753
Received
28 February 2023
Accepted
05 September 2023
Published
26 October 2023
Volume
14 - 2023
Edited by
Panicos Kyriacou, City University of London, United Kingdom
Reviewed by
Youngsun Kong, University of Connecticut, United States
Lisheng Xu, Northeastern University, China
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© 2023 Zanelli, Eveilleau, Charlton, Ammi, Hallab and El Yacoubi.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Serena Zanelli, zanelli@math.univ-paris13.fr
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