Journal Article

High-Reliability Signal Quality Validation for Biosignals Using Sensor Fusion and Software Indices

Adams, Basel

2026

Overview

This paper proposes a two-stage hybrid framework for biosignal quality validation that produces beat-level or segment-level labels for real-time filtering and offline dataset curation. The framework is quantitatively validated exclusively on ECG data. Its modular architecture is designed to extend to further non-stationary periodic biomedical time-series signals including photoplethysmography (PPG), impedance cardiography (ICG), phonocardiography (PCG), electromyography (EMG), and electroencephalography (EEG) through modality-specific parameter adaptation; however, this broader applicability currently reflects architectural extensibility rather than experimentally validated performance. A prerequisite is synchronized acquisition of the primary biosignal together with inertial motion sensing (IMU/accelerometer) and electrode impedance or lead-off status, with the IMU positioned near the sensing electrodes. The first stage performs sensor-integrity gating to reject intervals corrupted by motion or poor electrode contact. The second stage applies software signal quality indices to the remaining beats, including physiological plausibility constraints (R to R peaks analysis), DTW-based morphological consistency against adaptive templates, frequency domain SNR estimation, and baseline wander quantification. This study systematically evaluates and compares the classification performance of six complementary sensor-level and software-based signal quality assessment methods. When integrated within the proposed hybrid framework, validation against expert-annotated ECG quality labels from 20 healthy participants demonstrates high methodological classification accuracy (98.1%), achieving approximately a 98% F1-score, 99% sensitivity, and 97% specificity. Prospective validation on patient populations with cardiovascular pathology is identified as a necessary step toward clinical deployment. This modular approach improves the reliability of downstream analysis by preventing corrupted data from entering feature extraction and model training pipelines, enabling more stable physiological monitoring in free-living conditions, reducing false alarms in continuous monitoring applications, and generating higher-quality datasets for AI-based diagnostic systems.

• Publisher: MDPI AG,Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
• Subject: Accelerometers / Adaptation / Algorithms / Biosensing Techniques - methods / biosignals / Cardiac arrhythmia / Corruption / Datasets / Electrocardiogram / Electrocardiography / Electrocardiography - methods / Electrodes / Electroencephalography / Electromyography / Humans / hybrid validation framework / lead-off detection / Machine learning / Morphology / motion artifact detection / Phonocardiography / Photoplethysmography / Physiology / Regulatory approval / Reproducibility of Results / Sensors / Signal processing / Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / signal quality assessment / Signal-To-Noise Ratio / Software / Software quality