Congenital heart diseaseDiagnostic or prognostic study

Automated Echocardiographic Detection of Congenital Heart Disease Using Artificial Intelligence

CirculationPublished

  • Diagnostic accuracy study
  • AI model development
  • internal training (80%) and testing (20%)
  • external referral cohort evaluation

Authors' conclusion

EchoFocus-CHD shows promise for automated CHD detection to advance equitable global cardiovascular care

Study context

Population
Patients undergoing echo for congenital heart disease (CHD) detection (internal median age 7.1 years; referral median age 2.5 years)counts are echos
Participants
54,727 vs 3,356
Comparison
Internal vs Referral
  • Internaln = 54,727
  • Referraln = 3,356
Outcome
Detection of composite critical CHD by EchoFocus-CHD

Performance

As reported in the abstract

Composite critical CHD detection
Test or modelAUROCPositive likelihood ratioNegative likelihood ratio
Internal0.947.500.14
Referral0.77

Further findings

κ

OutcomeInternalReferral
Expert agreement0.820.72
Individual critical lesions (internal)
0.83-1.00 · AUROC
Composite noncritical CHD (internal)
0.90 · AUROC · Positive likelihood ratio 5.00 · Negative likelihood ratio 0.23
Individual noncritical lesions (internal)
0.70-0.96 · AUROC

International critical CHD detection after retraining on all US patients

AUROC
0.87
  • domain shift attenuated; calibration improved

Original publication

Automated Echocardiographic Detection of Congenital Heart Disease Using Artificial Intelligence. Circulation. Published 28 March 2026. doi:10.1161/circulationaha.126.079781

Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it