P2438Deep learning model for atrial fibrillation detection based on single beat morphology

Background The electrocardiogram (ECG) is commonly used, but most recent rhythm discrimination algorithms still lack both specificity and sensitivity. Deep learning techniques have shown promising results in the classification of physiological signals like ECGs. Purpose To develop and test a deep learning (DL) model to discriminate between atrial fibrillation (AF) and sinus rhythm (SR). Methods For the development of the DL model we used 1499 ECGs sampled at 500 Hz of patients diagnosed with AF. All ECGs were labeled by two experienced investigators. Only ECGs labeled as SR or AF were included in the dataset. To simplify the learning process, solely the first ECG channel was used. The ECG waveforms were preprocessed using the Fourier cosine series to correct for baseline wander. Input data was generated by normalizing and scaling all different heartbeats by centralizing the R peak, leading to 15744 single heart beat samples of 80 data points (figure A). Multiple feedforward architectures were tested with different numbers of layers, filters and activation functions. The models were trained by equally splitting the data (50%SR, 50%AF) in a training (65%), validation (25%) and test set (15%). The best performing model was chosen based on the accuracy. Results A total of 1469 ECGs (1061 (72%)SR, 408 (28%)AF) were included. The model with the best performance was a feedforward model consisting three dense layers with ReLU activation and four dense layers with Linear activation. Training of the model was performed in 32 epochs. Validation of the model resulted in an accuracy of 96% (figure B), precision of 95% and recall of 96%. Conclusions The morphology based deep learning model developed in this study was able to discriminate atrial fibrillation from sinus rhythm with a fairly high accuracy using a limited size dataset and only one lead.