Deep learning and hyperparameter optimization for assessing one’s eligibility for a subcutaneous implantable cardioverter-defibrillator

It is standard cardiology practice for patients suffering from ventricular arrhythmias (the main cause of sudden cardiac death) belonging to high risk populations to be treated via the implantation of Subcutaneous Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (S-ICDs). S-ICDs carry a risk of so-called T wave over sensing (TWOS), which can lead to inappropriate shocks that carry an inherent health risk. For this reason, according to current practice patients’ Electrocardiograms (ECGs) are manually screened by a cardiologist over 10 s to assess the T:R ratio—the ratio between the amplitudes of the T and R waves which is used as a marker for the likelihood of TWOS—with a plastic template. Unfortunately, the temporal variability of a patient’ T:R ratio can render such a screening procedure, which relies on an inevitably short ECG segment due to its manual nature, unreliable. In this paper, we propose and investigate a tool based on deep learning for the automatic prediction of the T:R ratios from multiple 10-second segments of ECG recordings capable of carrying out a 24-hour automated screening. Thanks to the significantly increased screening window, such a screening would provide far more reliable T:R ratio predictions than the currently utilized 10-second, template-based, manual screening is capable of. Our tool is the first, to the best of our knowledge, to fully automate such an otherwise manual and potentially inaccurate procedure. From a methodological perspective, we evaluate different deep learning model architectures for our tool, assess a range of stochastic-gradient-descent-based optimization methods for training their underlying deep-learning model, perform hyperparameter tuning, and create ensembles of the best performing models in order to identify which combination leads to the best performance. We find that the resulting model, which has been integrated into a prototypical tool for use by clinicians, is able to predict T:R ratios with very high accuracy. Thanks to this, our automated T:R ratio detection tool will enable clinicians to provide a completely automated assessment of whether a patient is eligible for S-ICD implantation which is more reliable than current practice thanks to adopting a significantly longer ECG screening window which better and more accurately captures the behavior of the patient’s T:R ratio than the current manual practice.