Generating Synthetic ECGs Using GANs for Anonymizing Healthcare Data

• Main Authors: Esteban Piacentino, Alvaro Guarner, Cecilio Angulo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-02-01
• Series: Electronics
• Subjects: GAN; ECG; anonymization; healthcare data; sensors; data transformation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/10/4/389

In personalized healthcare, an ecosystem for the manipulation of reliable and safe private data should be orchestrated. This paper describes an approach for the generation of synthetic electrocardiograms (ECGs) based on Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) with the objective of anonymizing users’ information for privacy issues. This is intended to create valuable data that can be used both in educational and research areas, while avoiding the risk of a sensitive data leakage. As GANs are mainly exploited on images and video frames, we are proposing general raw data processing after transformation into an image, so it can be managed through a GAN, then decoded back to the original data domain. The feasibility of our transformation and processing hypothesis is primarily demonstrated. Next, from the proposed procedure, main drawbacks for each step in the procedure are addressed for the particular case of ECGs. Hence, a novel research pathway on health data anonymization using GANs is opened and further straightforward developments are expected.