Jeonghwa Lim

Jeonghwa Lim, Minje Park, Sunghoon Joo

Accurate delineation of electrocardiogram (ECG), the segmentation of meaningful waveform features, is crucial for cardiovascular diagnostics. However, the scarcity of annotated data poses a significant challenge for training deep learning models. Conventional semi-supervised semantic segmentation (SemiSeg) methods primarily focus on consistency from unlabeled data, underutilizing the information exchange possible between labeled and unlabeled sets. To address this, we introduce CardioMix, a framework built on a bidirectional CutMix strategy guided by cardiac patterns for ECG segmentation. This approach enriches the labeled set with realistic variations from unlabeled data while simultaneously applying stronger supervisory signals to the unlabeled set, as the cardiac pattern-guided mixing ensures all augmented samples remain physiologically meaningful. Our framework is designed as a plug-and-play module, demonstrating high compatibility with various SemiSeg algorithms. Extensive experiments on SemiSegECG, a public multi-dataset benchmark for ECG delineation, demonstrate that CardioMix consistently outperforms existing CutMix-based fusion strategies across diverse datasets and labeled ratios as a plug-and-play module compatible with various SemiSeg algorithms.

Minje Park, Jeonghwa Lim, Taehyung Yu et al.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) delineation, the segmentation of meaningful waveform features, is critical for clinical diagnosis. Despite recent advances using deep learning, progress has been limited by the scarcity of publicly available annotated datasets. Semi-supervised learning presents a promising solution by leveraging abundant unlabeled ECG data. In this study, we present SemiSegECG, the first systematic benchmark for semi-supervised semantic segmentation (SemiSeg) in ECG delineation. We curated and unified multiple public datasets, including previously underused sources, to support robust and diverse evaluation. We adopted five representative SemiSeg algorithms from computer vision, implemented them on two different architectures: the convolutional network and the transformer, and evaluated them in two different settings: in-domain and cross-domain. Additionally, we propose ECG-specific training configurations and augmentation strategies and introduce a standardized evaluation framework. Our results show that the transformer outperforms the convolutional network in semi-supervised ECG delineation. We anticipate that SemiSegECG will serve as a foundation for advancing semi-supervised ECG delineation methods and will facilitate further research in this domain.