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Detection and classification of sepsis using large language models based on photoplethysmography signals

Hualparimachi Saire, Luis E.
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Abstract
Sepsis remains one of the leading causes of mortality in intensive care units (ICUs), requiring early and accurate detection to improve patient outcomes. The condition’s nonspecific symptoms and rapid physiological deterioration make early diagnosis particularly challenging. Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in deep learning (DL) and large language models (LLMs), has enabled new approaches to continuous and non-invasive diagnostic monitoring. This work proposes a multimodal framework that combines photoplethysmography (PPG) analysis with transformer-based LLMs for early sepsis detection. PPG signals from the MIMIC-III dataset were preprocessed through band-pass filtering, normalization, and adaptive peak detection to ensure morphological quality. Extracted temporal spectral features were encoded into structured text, enabling biomedical LLMs to interpret physiological patterns semantically. In Stage 1, a binary classifier based on BioClinicalBERT embeddings achieved strong discrimination between septic and control cases, with a mean F1-score of 0.985 and ROC–AUC of 0.990 across five-fold cross-validation. In Stage 2, a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system combined patient embeddings with a vectorized knowledge base of clinical guidelines and biomedical literature. Generated diagnostic narratives showed high semantic coherence (ROUGE-BERT ≈ 0.86) and domain-term coverage (>90%), effectively linking signal-derived findings with evidence-based reasoning. The proposed architecture integrates quantitative waveform analytics with qualitative clinical interpretation, providing a clear and scalable AI framework for sepsis detection. By leveraging noninvasive physiological data and open-access ICU databases, this approach establishes a foundation for real-time clinical decision support and adaptive monitoring in both high-resource and constrained healthcare environments.
La sepsis es una de las principales causas de mortalidad en las unidades de cuidados intensivos (UCI), por lo que su detecci´on temprana y precisa es fundamental. Sin embargo, sus manifestaciones cl´ınicas inespec´ıficas y el r´apido deterioro fisiol´ogico dificultan el diagn´ostico oportuno. Los avances recientes en inteligencia artificial (IA), en particular el aprendizaje profundo (DL) y los modelos de lenguaje de gran tama˜no (LLM), han permitido nuevas estrategias para la monitorizaci´on diagn´ostica continua y no invasiva. Este trabajo presenta un marco multimodal que integra se˜nales de fotopletismograf ´ıa (PPG) con modelos de lenguaje basados en transformadores para la detecci´on temprana de sepsis. Las se˜nales del conjunto MIMIC-III se procesaron mediante filtrado paso banda, normalizaci´on y detecci´on adaptativa de picos. Las caracter´ısticas temporales y espectrales resultantes se transformaron en secuencias textuales estructuradas, permitiendo que LLMs biom´edicos interpreten patrones fisiol´ogicos mediante razonamiento sem´antico. En la Etapa 1, un clasificador basado en Bio ClinicalBERT alcanz´o un puntaje F1 promedio de 0.985 y un AUC–ROC de 0.990 en validaci´on cruzada de cinco pliegues. En la Etapa 2, un sistema de generaci´on aumentada por recuperaci´on (RAG) combin´o las representaciones del paciente con una base vectorizada de gu´ıas cl´ınicas y literatura biom´edica. Los reportes generados lograron alta coherencia sem´antica (ROUGE–BERT ≈ 0.86) y cobertura terminol´ogica superior al 90%. La arquitectura propuesta integra an´alisis cuantitativo e interpretaci´on cl´ınica contextual, ofreciendo un marco de IA explicable y escalable para la detecci´on de sepsis. Al utilizar se˜nales no invasivas y datos cl´ınicos abiertos, este enfoque constituye una base para sistemas de apoyo a decisiones en tiempo real y para el monitoreo continuo en entornos hospitalarios con distintos niveles de recursos.
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2025-12-16
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Keywords
Sepsis, Photoplethysmography, Large language models, Bio ClinicalBERT, Retrieval-augmented generation, Non-invasive monitoring,, Multimodal AI, Clinical decision support
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