DELINEATE-Prospective

Overview

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and echocardiography (or "echo") is the most common way doctors look at the heart. Echo is safe, painless, and can detect major heart problems, including weak heart pumping and valve disease. Valve disease, especially aortic stenosis (narrowing) and mitral regurgitation (leakage), is common in older adults but often goes undiagnosed. While echo is the main tool for finding valve problems, it takes time, requires expert training, and results can vary between readers. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), especially deep learning (DL), have shown promise in automatically analyzing heart images. However, past research hasn't fully tackled key echo techniques-like color Doppler and spectral Doppler-that are crucial for measuring how blood moves through heart valves. AI tools also face challenges in being used in everyday medical practice because of workflow issues, lack of real-world testing, and concerns about how the algorithms make decisions. At Columbia University Irving Medical Center, researchers have built a large database of heart tests over the last six years and developed AI programs to analyze echocardiograms. The current study will test whether providing AI analysis to cardiologists in real time during echo reading can make the process faster and more consistent.

In a prior Columbia University study, a series of deep learning algorithms analyzing echocardiograms is in development. These algorithms include, but are not limited to, algorithms that enable view classification, structure identification, left ventricle (LV) dimension measurements, Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction (LVEF) determination, left atrium (LA) volume assessments, and valvular heart disease diagnosis. Briefly, these algorithms are based on architectures shown to be useful in image and video analysis, including ones specific to echocardiography interpretation. Algorithms based off these architectures can be generalized to interpretation of video-based echocardiogram data such as valvular regurgitation assessment. As part of this study protocol, these models will continue to be developed using patient echocardiogram data. This study aims to create an automated, end-to-end system that can deliver deep learning analyses of echocardiograms to the interpreting cardiologist in real-time. If successful, this program could enable improvements in echocardiography reading efficiency and reliability.