Abstract
In the study, a new method for analyzing Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals is suggested, which is vital for detecting and treating heart diseases. The technique focuses on improving ECG signal classification, particularly in identifying different heart conditions like arrhythmias and myocardial infarctions. An enhanced version of the differential evolution (DE) algorithm integrated with neural networks is leveraged to classify these signals effectively. The process starts with preprocessing and extracting key features from ECG signals. These features are then processed by a multi-layer perceptron (MLP), a common neural network for ECG analysis. However, traditional MLP training methods have limitations, such as getting trapped in suboptimal solutions. To overcome this, an advanced DE algorithm is used, incorporating a partition-based strategy, opposition-based learning, and local search mechanisms. This improved DE algorithm optimizes the MLP by fine-tuning its weights and biases, using them as starting points for further refinement by the Gradient Descent with Momentum (GDM) local search algorithm. Extensive experiments demonstrate that this novel training approach yields better results than the traditional method. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.