arXiv Machine Learning

Learning from VAE Errors to support ECG-based Differential Diagnosis of Myocardial Scar

The study investigates whether ECG representations derived from a β-variational autoencoder (VAE) can distinguish patients with myocardial scar (LGE+) from those without (LGE-) using routine ECG data. In a cohort of 300 cardiomyopathic patients, the β-VAE achieved an AUC of 0.577 (sensitivity 0.775) with Gradient Boosting, while the foundation ECGx.AI model reached an AUC of 0.686 with Random Forest. Dynamic Time Warping reconstruction errors differed significantly between classes in most leads and improved classification to an AUC of 0.643 with Logistic Regression, suggesting these errors could serve as markers of scar-related ECG changes.

arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 31

ECG-InterpBench: Benchmarking the Interpretability of ECG Foundation Models with Matched-Scale Sparse Autoencoders

arXiv:2607. 27404v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Existing benchmarks for electrocardiogram foundation models primarily evaluate downstream predictive performance, providing limited insight into whether their internal representations can be faithfully decomposed, clinically interpreted, or reproduced across independent analyses.

By Yixuan Duan, Wei Qiu
arXiv AI
Sep 10

Leveraging Cardiac Imaging to Improve ECG-Based Detection of Chagas Disease in Resource-Constrained Settings

The study demonstrates that contrastive pre‑training of ECG representations using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging data can enhance ECG‑based detection of Chagas disease. By aligning an ECG encoder with a CMR embedding space from 63,193 paired UK Biobank examinations, the authors achieved higher AUROC and sensitivity metrics on CODE‑15%, SaMi‑Trop, and PhysioNet/CinC 2025 Challenge datasets compared to an unaligned baseline. The approach shows that imaging‑supervised ECG representations generalize across different populations and resource‑constrained settings.

By Laura Alvarez-Florez, Daniel Uyterlinde, Samuel Ruip\'erez-Campillo, Lukas P. A. Arts, Folkert W. Asselbergs, Fleur V. Y. Tjong
arXiv AI
Jul 7

ImputeECG: Deep Learning Reconstruction of Complete 12-Lead Electrocardiograms from Incomplete Recordings for Cardiac Assessment

arXiv:2607. 05009v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Complete digital 12-lead electrocardiograms (ECGs) are essential for AI-enabled cardiovascular assessment, yet many clinical ECG records, particularly those digitized from ECG images, remain incomplete because of short display formats, incomplete waveform digitization, lead loss, or signal corruption.

By Xiaocheng Fang, Haoyu Wang, Jieyi Cai, Qinghao Zhao, Jun Li, Shanwei Zhang, Guangkun Nie, Yujie Xiao, Shun Huang, Jiarui Jin, Hongmin Liu, Guodong Wang, Shuohua Chen, Liming Lin, Shouling Wu, Hongyan Li, Shenda Hong
arXiv AI
Aug 5

FOUND-AF: Benchmarking ECG Foundation Models for Atrial Fibrillation Detection

arXiv:2608. 03597v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia and is associated with increased risks of stroke, heart failure, and mortality.

By Amirhossein Taleshinosrati, Yangyang Wang, Atitaya Phoemsuk, Vahid Abolghasemi, Naser Hossein Motlagh, Sadasivan Puthusserypady, Daniel Teichmann, Abdolrahman Peimankar
arXiv AI
Aug 12

LVCG: Learning ECG Representations in the Latent Vectorcardiogram Space

arXiv:2605. 31249v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Electrocardiography (ECG) is a cornerstone of cardiac assessment, making the learning of informative ECG representations fundamental to tasks ranging from disease diagnosis to clinical report generation.

By Bosong Huang, Panzhen Zhao, Zengxiang Li, Patricia Lee, Wei Jin, Alan Wee-Chung Liew, Ming Jin, Shirui Pan
arXiv AI
Aug 24

Fine-tuning an ECG Foundation Model to Predict Coronary CT Angiography Outcomes

A multicenter study developed an AI-enabled electrocardiography (AI-ECG) model that predicts vessel-specific hemodynamically significant stenosis using coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA) as the reference. The model demonstrated strong discrimination in internal and external cohorts, including normal ECGs, and produced low-, intermediate-, and high-risk strata that correlated with stenosis severity and major adverse cardiovascular events. Calibration, decision curve analyses, and integration with guideline-based pre-test probability showed clinical utility, while waveform and attribution analyses revealed physiologically meaningful ECG features linked to high-risk predictions.

By Yujie Xiao, Qinghao Zhao, Gongzheng Tang, Hao Zhang, Zhuoran Kan, Deyun Zhang, Jun Li, Guangkun Nie, Xiaocheng Fang, Haoyu Wang, Shun Huang, Tong Liu, Jian Liu, Kangyin Chen, Shenda Hong
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 28

Beyond Local Inspection: Global, Guideline-Grounded Evaluation of Post-hoc XAI Methods for ECG Classification

arXiv:2607. 24035v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Explainable AI (XAI) is used to assess whether artificial intelligence models rely on meaningful patterns, yet explanations that appear plausible for individual predictions may systematically misrepresent model behavior.

By Nils Gumpfer, Michael Guckert, Samuel Sossalla, Birgit A{\ss}mus, Jennifer Hannig
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 21

ECG-LLM: Foundation Model for ECG-Based Cardiac Reasoning

arXiv:2607. 16323v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Electrocardiography (ECG) is an inexpensive, standard-of-care test for cardiac symptoms, but front-line triage often lacks immediate access to definitive imaging such as echocardiography (ECHO) or cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR).

By Alexander Selivanov, Friederike Jungmann, Jan Kehrer, Karl-Ludwig Laugwitz, Eimo Martens, Daniel Rueckert
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 7

Do ECG Foundation Models Transfer to Rare Cardiac Diseases? Evidence from Brugada Syndrome Detection

arXiv:2607. 03009v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Background: Foundation models (FMs) trained on large-scale unlabeled physiological data have emerged as a promising paradigm for medical artificial intelligence.

By Beatrice Zanchi, Giuliana Monachino, Alvise Dei Rossi, Luigi Fiorillo, Georgia Sarquella-Brugada, Giulio Conte, Francesca Dalia Faraci