Deep Learning for Arrhythmia Classification: A Comparative Study on Different Deep Learning Models

Arrhythmias, or irregular heart rhythms, are a major global health concern. Since arrhythmias can cause fatal conditions like cardiac failure and strokes, they must be rapidly identified and treated. Traditional arrhythmia diagnostic techniques include manual electrocardiogram (ECG) image interpretation, which is time consuming and frequently required for expertise. This research automates and improves the identification of heart problems, with a focus on arrhythmias, by utilizing the capabilities of deep learning, an advanced machine learning technique that performs well at recognizing patterns in data. Specifically, we implement and compare Custom CNN, VGG19, and Inception V3 deep learning models, which classify ECG images into six categories, including normal heart rhythms and various types of arrhythmias. The VGG19 model excelled, achieving a training accuracy of 95.7% and a testing accuracy of 93.8%, showing the effectiveness of deep learning in the comprehensive diagnosis of heart diseases.