Investigation of machine learning techniques in forecasting of blood pressure time series data

The aim of this paper is to investigate different machine learning based forecasting techniques for forecasting of blood pressure and heart rate. Forecasting of blood pressure could potentially help a clinician to take preventative steps even before dangerous medical situations occur. This paper examines forecasting blood pressure 30 minutes in advance. Univariate and multivariate forecast models are considered. Different forecast strategies are also considered. To compare different forecast strategies, LSTM and BI-LSTM machine learning algorithms were included. Then univariate and multivariate LSTM, BI-LSTM and CNN machine learning algorithms were compared using the two best forecasting strategies. Comparative analysis between forecasting strategies suggest that MIMO and DIRMO forecast strategies provide the best accuracy in forecasting physiological time series data. Results also appear to show that multivariate forecast models for blood pressure and heart rate are more reliable compared to blood pressure alone. Comparative analysis between MIMO and DIRMO forecasting strategies appear to show that DIRMO is more reliable for both univariate and multivariate cases. Results also appear to show that the forecast model that uses BI-LSTM with the DIRMO strategy is the best overall.