A Lightweight CNN-Attention-BiLSTM Architecture for Multi-Class Arrhythmia Classification on Standard and Wearable ECGs

Abstract: Early and accurate detection of cardiac arrhythmias is vital for timely diagnosis and intervention. We propose a lightweight deep learning model combining 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), attention mechanisms, and Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) for classifying arrhythmias from both 12-lead and single-lead ECGs. Evaluated on the CPSC 2018 dataset, the model addresses class imbalance using a class-weighted loss and demonstrates superior accuracy and F1- scores over baseline models. With only 0.945 million parameters, our model is well-suited for real-time deployment in wearable health monitoring systems.