Are 'time series data' provided separately?

[indie Cha]

Dear challenge teams,

We have a question.

On the competition website's 'Objective' section, it states that participation is possible in two parts and awards are given separately.

We want to participate only in the second part 'Classify the ECGs (either from the image, or from the converted time series data) as normal or abnormal.' Are 'time series data' provided separately?

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Objective

For the 2024 Challenge, we ask participants to design and implement open-source algorithms that can reconstruct ECG waveforms and/or classify CVDs from physical ECGs. The Challenge is split into two separate events:

1. Turn images of 12-lead ECGs (scanned from paper) into waveforms (time series data) representing the same ECGs;

2. Classify the ECGs (either from the image, or from the converted time series data) as normal or abnormal.

There are two separate prizes, and you may enter either part of the Challenge, or both. If you choose to complete both parts, then you may use the output from the first part of the Challenge in the second part, or not. The winners of each of the two parts of the Challenge will be the teams whose algorithms achieve the best performance on the hidden test set.

[PhysioNet Challenge]

Dear Cuong,

As you noted, you can complete either or both of the digitization and/or classification tasks.

If you are only completing the classification task, then you can classify the ECG images directly. You do not need to digitize the images.

Similarly, if you are only completing the digitization task, then you can reconstruct the ECG time series from the ECG images. You do not need to classify time series or images.

If you are completing both the digitization and classification tasks, then you can first reconstruct the ECG time series and then classify the time series instead of from the images -- or something else, depending on which approach works best for your team.

Regardless, we will share the ECG time series with the ECG images in the training set whenever they are available, but we will only include the images and not the time series in the validation or test sets -- even if you are only completing the classification task.

Best,
Matt
(On behalf of the Challenge team.)

Please post questions and comments in the forum. However, if your question reveals information about your entry, then please email info at physionetchallenge.org. We may post parts of our reply publicly if we feel that all Challengers should benefit from it. We will not answer emails about the Challenge to any other address. This email is maintained by a group. Please do not email us individually.