Why the study?
Current pain assessment relies on subjective self-report, prompting the need for non-invasive, objective pain measurements using biosensors and machine learning.
Does a machine learning algorithm using ECG-derived features accurately detect acute pain in healthy adults?
Does a machine learning algorithm using ECG-derived features accurately detect acute pain in healthy adults?
Machine learning algorithms using ECG-derived heart rate variability and respiratory features can objectively detect acute pain with good accuracy.
May aid objective pain research in healthy adults; leaves open clinical validation in patients before any use.
Pain is one of the most common symptoms reported by individuals presenting to hospitals and clinics and is associated with significant disability and economic impacts; however, the ability to quantify and monitor pain is modest and typically accomplished through subjective self-report. Since pain is associated with stereotypical physiological alterations, there is potential for non-invasive, objective pain measurements through biosensors coupled with machine learning algorithms. In the current study, a physiological dataset associated with acute pain induction in healthy adults was leveraged to develop an algorithm capable of detecting pain in real-time and in natural field environments. Forty-one human subjects were exposed to acute pain through the cold pressor test while being monitored using electrocardiography. A series of respiratory and heart rate variability features in the time, frequency, and nonlinear domains were calculated and used to develop logistic regression classifiers of pain for two scenarios: (1) laboratory/clinical use with an F1 score of 81.9% and (2) field/ambulatory use with an F1 score of 79.4%. The resulting pain algorithms could be leveraged to quantify acute pain using data from a range of sources, such as ECG data in clinical settings or pulse plethysmography data in a growing number of consumer wearables. Given the high prevalence of pain worldwide and the lack of objective methods to quantify it, this approach has the potential to identify and better mitigate individual pain.
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Winslow et al. (2022) studied this question.
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