Authors: Diya Manoj, Dr. Asha K
Abstract: Electrocardiography (ECG) is an essential tool for diagnosing heart conditions, yet traditional manual interpretation takes more time and is subject to variability among experts. This research explores the application of deep learning techniques to automate ECG classification, aiming to enhance diagnostic correctness and speed and reliability. Using a dataset comprising 120,000 ECG images, a deep learning model based on the ResNet18 architecture was developed to categorize ECG signals into four classes: Myocardial Infarction, Abnormal Heartbeat, History of Myocardial Infarction (MI), and Normal. The study involved extensive pre-processing of ECG images, including normalization, augmentation, and noise reduction techniques to improve data quality. An exploratory data analysis (EDA) phase was conducted to visualize class distributions and identify potential challenges such as class imbalance. The model was trained for 40 epochs, achieving a training correctness of 99.85% and a best test correctness of 76.85%. Evaluation metrics such as precision, recall, and F1-score were used to assess performance, with confusion matrices revealing areas of improvement. Despite promising results, challenges such as class imbalances, overfitting, and the difficulty of distinguishing similar ECG patterns were encountered. Strategies such as weighted loss functions, dropout layers, and hyperparameter tuning were employed to mitigate these issues. The study concludes that deep learning models can serve as effective tools for ECG classification, providing a foundation for real-time clinical applications. Future work will focus on dataset expansion, model generalization, and real- time deployment to facilitate broader adoption in healthcare settings.