An artificial intelligence-enabled Holter algorithm to identify patients with ventricular tachycardia by analysing their electrocardiogram during sinus rhythm.

Aims: Ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a dangerous cardiac arrhythmia that can lead to sudden cardiac death. Early detection and management of VT is thus of high clinical importance. We hypothesize that it is possible to identify patients with VT during sinus rhythm by leveraging a continuous 24 h Holter electrocardiogram and artificial intelligence.

Methods and results: We analysed a retrospective Holter data set from the Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel, which included 1773 Holter recordings from 1570 non-VT patients and 52 recordings from 49 VT patients. Morphological and heart rate variability features were engineered from the raw electrocardiogram signal and fed, together with demographical features, to a data-driven model for the task of classifying a patient as either VT or non-VT. The model obtained an area under the receiving operative curve of 0.76 ± 0.07. Feature importance suggested that the proportion of premature ventricular beats and beat-to-beat interval variability was discriminative of VT, while demographic features were not.

Conclusion: This original study demonstrates the feasibility of VT identification from sinus rhythm in Holter.