Detecting Neurovascular Instability from Multimodal Physiological Signals Using Wearable-Compatible Edge AI: A Responsible Computational Framework
Organizations: H&K Research Studio, Clevix LLC, Hanoi, Vietnam · the Department of Cardiology, Hanoi Heart Hospital, Hanoi, Vietnam
Abstract
We propose Melaguard, a multimodal ML framework (Transformer-lite, 1.2M parameters, 4-head self-attention) for detecting neurovascular instability (NVI) from wearable-compatible physiological signals prior to structural stroke pathology. The model fuses heart rate variability (HRV), peripheral perfusion index, SpO2, and bilateral phase coherence into a composite NVI Score, designed for edge inference (WCET <=4 ms on Cortex-M4). NVI - the pre-structural dysregulation of cerebrovascular autoregulation preceding overt stroke - remains undetectable by existing single-modality wearables. With 12.2 million incident strokes annually, continuous multimodal physiological monitoring offers a practical path to community-scale screening. Three-stage independent validation: (1) synthetic benchmark (n=10,000), AUC=0.88 [0.83-0.92]; (2) clinical cohort PhysioNet CVES (n=172; 84 stroke, 88 control) - Transformer-lite achieves AUC=0.755 [0.630-0.778], outperforming LSTM (0.643), Random Forest (0.665), SVM (0.472); HRV-SDNN discriminates stroke (p=0.011); (3) PPG pipeline PhysioNet BIDMC (n=53) -- pulse rate r=0.748 and HRV surrogate r=0.690 vs. ECG ground truth. Cross-modality validation on PPG-BP (n=219) confirms PPG morphology classifies cerebrovascular disease at AUC=0.923 [0.869-0.968]. Multimodal fusion consistently outperforms single-modality baselines. Code: https://github.com/ClevixLab/Melaguard
Figures & tables
| Feature | Stroke ( ) | Control ( ) | (S/C) | -value | Sig. | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HRV RMSSD 24h (ms) | 40/45 | 0.037 | ∗ | |||
| HRV SDNN 24h (ms) | 40/45 | 0.011 | ∗∗ | |||
| HRV LF/HF ratio | 39/44 | 0.931 | ns | — | ||
| RMSSD waveform (ms) | 40/28 | 0.038 | ∗ | cross-val. 24h | ||
| SDNN waveform (ms) | 40/28 | 0.043 | ∗ | cross-val. 24h | ||
| Phase asymmetry MMPF ( ∘ ) | 34/35 | 0.829 | ns | power 15% |
| Model | AUC [95% CI] | Sens. | Spec. | PPV | NPV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transformer-lite † | 0.755 [0.630–0.778] | 0.906 | 0.400 | 0.592 | 0.843 |
| LSTM | 0.643 [0.524–0.691] | 0.630 | 0.501 | 0.533 | 0.627 |
| Random Forest | 0.665 [0.576–0.742] | 0.751 | 0.469 | 0.579 | 0.709 |
| SVM | 0.472 [0.414–0.578] | 0.240 | 0.787 | 0.326 | 0.516 |
| Signal / Metric | Pearson | B-A Bias | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pulse rate | 0.748 ∗∗∗ | bpm | LoA bpm, |
| PRV RMSSD vs ECG | 0.690 ∗∗∗ | ms | LoA ms, |
| PRV SDNN vs ECG | 0.511 ∗∗∗ | ms | |
| LF/HF (PRV vs ECG) | 0.286 | — | |
| PI mean (AC/DC) | — | — | , |
| PI vs SpO 2 | — | ns, exploratory |
| Subset | n | RF AUC | SVM AUC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full ( 21 yr, age incl.) | 113 | 0.927 | 0.908 |
| Full ( 21 yr, age excl.) | 113 | 0.923 | 0.882 |
| Age-only baseline | 113 | 0.872 | — |
| (full model vs. age-only) | — | +0.051 | — |
| Subset 50 yr (age incl.) | 80 | 0.881 | 0.854 |
| Subset 55 yr (age incl.) | 66 | 0.856 | 0.802 |
| Strategy | Model | AUC [Bootstrap 95% CI] | Sens. | Spec. | NPV |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A: CI vs. Normal ( ) | Transformer-lite † | 0.915 [0.826–0.984] | 1.000 | 0.957 | 1.000 |
| LSTM | 0.728 [0.608–0.833] | 0.900 | 0.942 | 0.975 | |
| Random Forest | 0.953 [0.880–0.999] | 0.900 | 1.000 | 0.973 | |
| SVM | 0.905 [0.793–0.986] | 0.900 | 0.879 | 0.972 | |
| B: CBV vs. Normal ( ) | Transformer-lite † | 0.923 [0.869–0.968] | 0.933 | 0.881 | 0.958 |
| LSTM | 0.912 [0.859–0.958] | 0.911 | 0.884 | 0.945 |
| Claim / Component | CVES (ECG+TCD) | BIDMC (PPG+ECG) | PPG-BP (PPG) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HRV discriminates stroke | SDNN ; RMSSD | PRV–HRV | — | Validated |
| Transformer-lite fusion | AUC 0.755 [0.630–0.778] | — | — | Validated |
| PPG pulse extraction | — | PR ; B-A bias bpm | — | Validated |
| Perfusion index (AC/DC) | partial (ECG surrogate) | PI | PI reported per group | Validated |
| PPG morphology (CBV) | — | — | AUC 0.923 [0.869–0.968]; age-adj. 0.914 | Validated † |
| Phase coherence | trend, (ns) | — | — | Partial |
Wearable Health Monitoring
Wearable health monitoring uses body-worn sensors and AI to track physiological and behavioral signals for continuous, personalized health assessment.
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