ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most common cardiac arrhythmias that affects millions of people each year worldwide and it is closely linked to increased risk of cardiovas- cular diseases such as stroke and heart failure. Machine learning methods have shown promising results in evaluating the risk of developing atrial fibrillation from the electrocardiogram. We aim to develop and evaluate one such algorithm on a large CODE dataset collected in Brazil. METHODS: We used the CODE cohort to develop and test a model for AF risk prediction for individual patients from the raw ECG recordings without the use of additional digital biomarkers. The cohort is a collection of ECG recordings and annotations by the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais, in Brazil. A convolutional neural network based on a residual network architecture was implemented to produce class probabilities for the classification of AF. The probabilities were used to develop a Cox proportional hazards model and a Kaplan-Meier model to carry out survival analysis. Hence, our model is able to perform risk prediction for the development of AF in patients without the condition. RESULTS: The deep neural network model identified patients without indication of AF in the presented ECG but who will develop AF in the future with an AUC score of 0.845. From our survival model, we obtain that patients in the high-risk group (i.e. with the probability of a future AF case being >0.7) are 50% more likely to develop AF within 40 weeks, while patients belonging to the minimal-risk group (i.e. with the probability of a future AF case being less than or equal to 0.1) have >85% chance of remaining AF free up until after seven years. CONCLUSION: We developed and validated a model for AF risk prediction. If applied in clinical practice, the model possesses the potential of providing valuable and useful information in decision- making and patient management processes.
