Artificial intelligence–enabled electrocardiography for assessment of left ventricular systolic dysfunction in the era of foundation models

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Artificial intelligence (AI) applied to the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram (AI-ECG) is being developed as a scalable approach to screen for left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) and support triage for confirmatory testing. Supervised models trained on paired ECG-echocardiography data show high discrimination for reduced ejection fraction across thresholds and can identify individuals at higher risk of subsequent LV dysfunction despite a normal baseline echocardiogram. External validation of an FDA-cleared ECG-AI device across four geographically diverse U.S. health systems confirmed strong diagnostic accuracy, though signal-format compatibility and quality gating meaningfully affect real-world yield. Two pragmatic randomized trials demonstrate practice-level impact. In primary care, AI-ECG increased the number of new low-ejection-fraction diagnoses and directed echocardiography preferentially to screen-positive patients. In non-cardiology inpatient wards, AI alerts improved diagnostic yield through increased cardiology consultation rather than increased imaging volume. In emergency-department patients with dyspnea, AI-ECG supports a prioritization role with high negative predictive value, outperforming NT-proBNP, but requires confirmatory imaging given prevalence-dependent positive predictive value. In population cohorts, adding AI-ECG signals to PREVENT-HF improves near-term heart-failure risk discrimination and reclassification, though without demonstrated benefit on clinical outcomes such as heart-failure hospitalization or mortality. Foundation models pretrained on large ECG datasets reduce labeled-data requirements and improve transportability, but prospective echocardiography-anchored validation is required before broader deployment. FDA-cleared software is available for left ventricular ejection fraction ≤40% screening from 12-lead ECGs as clinician decision support. This review summarizes performance across thresholds and care settings, outlines threshold selection and calibration, and defines priorities for outcome-oriented trials, equitable deployment, and implementation governance.

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