Detection of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy by an artificial intelligence electrocardiogram in children and adolescents

Background: There is no established screening approach for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). We recently developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model for the detection of HCM based on the 12‑lead electrocardiogram (AI-ECG) in adults. Here, we aimed to validate this approach of ECG-based HCM detection in pediatric patients (age ≤ 18 years).

Methods: We identified a cohort of 300 children and adolescents with HCM (mean age 12.5 ± 4.6 years, male 68%) who had an ECG and echocardiogram at our institution. Patients were age- and sex-matched to 18,439 non-HCM controls. Diagnostic performance of the AI-ECG model for the detection of HCM was estimated using the previously identified optimal diagnostic threshold of 11% (the probability output derived by the model above which an ECG is considered to belong to an HCM patient).

Results: Mean AI-ECG probabilities of HCM were 92% and 5% in the case and control groups, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of the AI-ECG model for HCM detection was 0.98 (95% CI 0.98-0.99) with corresponding sensitivity 92% and specificity 95%. The positive and negative predictive values were 22% and 99%, respectively. The model performed similarly in males and females and in genotype-positive and genotype-negative HCM patients. Performance tended to be superior with increasing age. In the age subgroup <5 years, the test's AUC was 0.93. In comparison, the AUC was 0.99 in the age subgroup 15-18 years.

Conclusions: A deep-learning, AI model can detect pediatric HCM with high accuracy from the standard 12‑lead ECG.