ROCHESTER, Minn. - An approach based on artificial intelligence (AI) may allow EKGs to be used to screen for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in the future. With hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the heart walls become thick and may interfere with the heart's ability to function properly. The disease also predisposes some patients to potentially fatal abnormal rhythms. Current EKG technology has limited diagnostic yield for this disease.
New Mayo Clinic research suggests that a convolutional neural network AI can be trained to detect unseen characteristics of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The standard 12-lead EKG is a readily available, low-cost test that can be performed in many settings, including those with limited resources.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy may be underdiagnosed because it often does not cause symptoms. Patients are often unaware they have it until they experience complications, but early identification can be important. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one of the leading causes of sudden death in adolescents and young adults participating in sports.
Peter Noseworthy, M.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiologist, suggests that AI might offer an effective and readily-available method for earlier diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy through an EKG. Dr. Noseworthy is senior author on a newly published study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: "Detection of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Using a Convolutional Neural Network-Enabled Electrocardiogram."
Researchers trained and validated a convolutional neural network using digital 12-lead EKG from 2,448 patients known to have hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and 51,153 who did not, matching the control subjects for age and sex. Next they tested the AI's ability to detect the disease on a different group of 612 subjects with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and 12,788 control subjects.
For diagnostic tests such as this neural network, the diagnostic performance is measured mathematically through the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, on a scale where 0.5 is poor (flip of a coin) and 1.0 is excellent (perfect test). The measurement relates to the test's ability to correctly identify patients who have the disease (sensitivity), and correctly identify patients who do not have the disease (specificity).
For comparison, a typical positive Pap smear test would have an area under the curve of 0.7 and a mammogram would be 0.85. The study found the AI's ability to determine patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy from those without it had an area under the curve of 0.96 ? a powerful predictor.
