Assessment of the stability of morphological ECG features and their potential for person verification/identification

Abstract

This study investigates the potential of a set of ECG morphological features for person verification/identification. The measurements are done over 145 pairs of ECG recordings from healthy subjects, acquired 5 years apart (T1, T2 = T1+5 years). Time, amplitude, area and slope descriptors of the QRS-T pattern are analysed in 4 ECG leads, forming quasi-orthogonal lead system (II&III, V1, V5). The correspondence between feature values in T1 and T2 is verified via factor analysis by principal components extraction method; correlation analysis applied over the measurements in T1 and T2; synthesis of regression equations for prediction of features’ values in T2 based on T1 measurements; and cluster analysis for assessment of the correspondence between measured and predicted feature values. Thus, 11 amplitude descriptors of the QRS complex are highlighted as stable, i.e. keeping their strong correlation (≥0.7) within a certain factor, weak correlation (<0.3) with the features from the remaining factors and presenting high correlation in the two measurement periods that is a sign for their person verification/identification potential. The observed coincidence between feature values measured in T2 and predicted via the designed regression models (r=0.93) suggests about the confidence of person identification via the proposed morphological features.