Automatic classification of healthy and disease conditions from images or digital standard 12-lead electrocardiograms

Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 1;10(1):16331. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-73060-w.

Abstract

Standard 12-lead electrocardiography (ECG) is used as the primary clinical tool to diagnose changes in heart function. The value of automated 12-lead ECG diagnostic approaches lies in their ability to screen the general population and to provide a second opinion for doctors. Yet, the clinical utility of automated ECG interpretations remains limited. We introduce a two-way approach to an automated cardiac disease identification system using standard digital or image 12-lead ECG recordings. Two different network architectures, one trained using digital signals (CNN-dig) and one trained using images (CNN-ima), were generated. An open-source dataset of 41,830 classified standard ECG recordings from patients and volunteers was generated. CNN-ima was trained to identify atrial fibrillation (AF) using 12-lead ECG digital signals and images that were also transformed to mimic mobile device camera-acquired ECG plot snapshots. CNN-dig accurately (92.9-100%) identified every possible combination of the eight most-common cardiac conditions. Both CNN-dig and CNN-ima accurately (98%) detected AF from standard 12-lead ECG digital signals and images, respectively. Similar classification accuracy was achieved with images containing smartphone camera acquisition artifacts. Automated detection of cardiac conditions in standard digital or image 12-lead ECG signals is feasible and may improve current diagnostic methods.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Atrial Fibrillation / diagnosis
  • Atrial Fibrillation / physiopathology
  • Automation / methods
  • Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted* / methods
  • Electrocardiography / methods*
  • Female
  • Heart / physiology
  • Heart / physiopathology
  • Heart Diseases / diagnosis*
  • Heart Diseases / physiopathology
  • Humans
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted* / methods
  • Male
  • Neural Networks, Computer
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Supervised Machine Learning