Article 2026-04-21 under-review v1

Interpretable Classification of Time Series Using Euler Characteristic Surfaces

B
Buddha Nath Sharma National Institute of Technology Sikkim
V
Vishal Mandal National Institute of Technology Sikkim
S
Salam Rabindrajit Luwang National Institute of Technology Sikkim
M
Md. Nurujjaman National Institute of Technology Sikkim
A
Atish J. Mitra Montana Technological University
S
Sushovan Majhi George Washington University

Abstract

Persistent homology (PH)—the conventional method in topological data analysis—is computationally expensive, requires further vectorization of its signatures before machine learning (ML) can be applied, and captures information along only the spatial axis. For time series data, we propose Euler Characteristic Surfaces (ECS) as an alternative topological signature based on the Euler characteristic (χ)—a fundamental topological invariant. The ECS provides a computationally efficient, spatiotemporal, and inherently discretized feature representation that can serve as direct input to ML models. We prove a stability theorem guaranteeing that the ECS remains stable under small perturbations of the input time series. We first demonstrate that ECS effectively captures nontrivial topological differences between the limit cycle and the strange attractor in the Rossler system. We then develop an ECS-based classification framework and apply it to five benchmark biomedical datasets (four ECG, one EEG) from the UCR/UEA archive. On ECG5000, our single-feature ECS classifier achieves 98% accuracy with O(n+R・ T) complexity, compared to 62% reported by a recent PH-based method. An AdaBoost extension raises accuracy to 98.6%, matching the best deep learning results while retaining full interpretability. Strong results are also obtained on TwoLeadECG (94.1%) and Epilepsy2 (92.6%).

Citation Information

@article{buddhanathsharma2026,
  title={Interpretable Classification of Time Series Using Euler Characteristic Surfaces},
  author={Buddha Nath Sharma and Vishal Mandal and Salam Rabindrajit Luwang and Md. Nurujjaman and Atish J. Mitra and Sushovan Majhi},
  journal={Scientific Reports},
  year={2026},
  doi={https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9295091/v1}
}
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