Digital biomarkers and artificial intelligence for mass diagnosis of atrial fibrillation in a population sample at risk of sleep disordered breathing

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel AI-based method using digital biomarkers to detect atrial fibrillation from overnight ECG recordings, demonstrating high accuracy in a large at-risk population, including those with sleep-disordered breathing.

Contribution

The paper presents a new AI-driven approach for mass AF diagnosis using digital biomarkers from ECG data, effective even in patients with sleep apnea.

Findings

High sensitivity (97%) and specificity (99%) in AF detection.

Over 22% of AF cases were previously undiagnosed.

Detection accuracy unaffected by sleep apnea presence.

Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most prevalent arrhythmia and is associated with a five-fold increase in stroke risk. Many individuals with AF go undetected. These individuals are often asymptomatic. There are ongoing debates on whether mass screening for AF is to be recommended. However, there is incentive in performing screening for specific at risk groups such as individuals suspected of sleep-disordered breathing where an important association between AF and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) has been demonstrated. We introduce a new methodology leveraging digital biomarkers and recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) for the purpose of mass AF diagnosis. We demonstrate the value of such methodology in a large population sample at risk of sleep disordered breathing. Four databases, totaling n=3,088 patients and p=26,913 hours of ECG raw data were used. Three of the databases (n=125, p=2,513) were used for training a machine learning model in recognizing AF events from beat-to-beat interval time series. The visit 1 of the sleep heart health study database (SHHS1, n=2,963, p=24,400) consists of overnight polysomnographic (PSG) recordings, and was considered as the test set. In SHHS1, expert inspection identified a total of 70 patients with a prominent AF rhythm. Model prediction on the SHHS1 showed an overall Se=0.97,Sp=0.99,NPV=0.99,PPV=0.67 in classifying individuals with or without prominent AF. PPV was non-inferior (p=0.03) for individuals with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) > 15 versus AHI < 15. Over 22% of correctly identified prominent AF rhythm cases were not documented as AF in the SHHS1. Individuals with prominent AF can be automatically diagnosed from an overnight single channel ECG recording, with an accuracy unaffected by the presence of OSA. AF detection from overnight ECG recording revealed a large proportion of undiagnosed AF and may enhance the phenotyping of OSA.