# Closing Gaps: An Imputation Analysis of ICU Vital Signs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.24217 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.24217/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [DiffWave: A Versatile Diffusion Model for Audio Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09761/) (2020)
- [CSDI: Conditional Score-based Diffusion Models for Probabilistic Time Series Imputation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03502/) (2021)
- [Recurrent Neural Networks for Multivariate Time Series with Missing Values](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.01865/) (2016)
- [Neural Processes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.01622/) (2018)
- [Multitask learning and benchmarking with clinical time series data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07771/) (2017)
- [BRITS: Bidirectional Recurrent Imputation for Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.10572/) (2018)
- [Diffusion-based Time Series Imputation and Forecasting with Structured State Space Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09399/) (2022)
- [SAITS: Self-Attention-based Imputation for Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08516/) (2022)
- [MIMIC-Extract: A Data Extraction, Preprocessing, and Representation Pipeline for MIMIC-III](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.08322/) (2019)
- [Filling the G_ap_s: Multivariate Time Series Imputation by Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00298/) (2021)
- [HyperImpute: Generalized Iterative Imputation with Automatic Model Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07769/) (2022)
- [HiRID-ICU-Benchmark -- A Comprehensive Machine Learning Benchmark on High-resolution ICU Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08536/) (2021)
- [Benchmarking machine learning models on multi-centre eICU critical care dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.00964/) (2019)
- [A Review of Deep Learning Methods for Irregularly Sampled Medical Time Series Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12493/) (2020)
- [Benchmarking emergency department triage prediction models with machine learning and large public electronic health records](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11017/) (2021)
- [Yet Another ICU Benchmark: A Flexible Multi-Center Framework for Clinical ML](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05109/) (2023)
- [Benchmarking missing-values approaches for predictive models on health databases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10580/) (2022)
- [Benchmarking Deep Learning Architectures for Predicting Readmission to the ICU and Describing Patients-at-Risk](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.08547/) (2019)
- [PyPOTS: A Python Toolkit for Machine Learning on Partially-Observed Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18811/) (2023)
- [Clairvoyance: A Pipeline Toolkit for Medical Time Series](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18688/) (2023)
- [R-miss-tastic: a unified platform for missing values methods and workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.04822/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As more Intensive Care Unit (ICU) data becomes available, the interest in developing clinical prediction models to improve healthcare protocols increases. However, the lack of data quality still hinders clinical prediction using Machine Learning (ML). Many vital sign measurements, such as heart rate, contain sizeable missing segments, leaving gaps in the data that could negatively impact prediction performance. Previous works have introduced numerous time-series imputation techniques. Nevertheless, more comprehensive work is needed to compare a representative set of methods for imputing ICU vital signs and determine the best practice. In reality, ad-hoc imputation techniques that could decrease prediction accuracy, like zero imputation, are still used. In this work, we compare established imputation techniques to guide researchers in improving the performance of clinical prediction models by selecting the most accurate imputation technique. We introduce an extensible and reusable benchmark with currently 15 imputation and 4 amputation methods, created for benchmarking on major ICU datasets. We hope to provide a comparative basis and facilitate further ML development to bring more models into clinical practice.