Tracking sugar in the blood is crucial for both healthy individuals and diabetic patients. Current methods to measure glucose requires needles and repeated fingerpicks over the day. Fingerpicks can often be painful, deterring patient compliance.
A new technique developed by researchers at the University of Warwick uses the latest findings of Artificial Intelligence to detect hypoglycaemic events from raw ECG signals, via wearable sensors.
The technology works with an 82% reliability, and could replace the need for invasive finger-prick testing with a needle, which could be particularly useful for paediatric age patients.
Currently Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) are available by the NHS for hypoglycaemia detection (sugar levels into blood or derma). They measure glucose in interstitial fluid using an invasive sensor with a little needle, which sends alarms and data to a display device. In many cases, they require calibration twice a day with invasive finger-prick blood glucose level tests.
The research team has published a paper in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports proving that using the latest findings of Artificial Intelligence (i.e., deep learning), they can detect hypoglycaemic events from raw ECG signals acquired with off-the-shelf non-invasive wearable sensors.
Two pilot studies with healthy volunteers found the average sensitivity and specificity approximately 82% for hypoglycaemia detection, which is comparable with the current CGM performance, although non-invasive.
Fingerpicks are never pleasant and in some circumstances are particularly cumbersome. Taking fingerpick during the night certainly is unpleasant, especially for patients in paediatric age.
This innovation consisted in using artificial intelligence for automatic detecting hypoglycaemia via few ECG beats. This is relevant because ECG can be detected in any circumstance, including sleeping.
The figure shows the output of the algorithms over the time: the green line represents normal glucose levels, while the red line represents the low glucose levels. The horizontal line represents the 4mmol/L glucose value, which is considered the significant threshold for hypoglycaemic events. The grey area surrounding the continuous line reflects the measurement error bar.
News Source: University of Warwick
