AI Offers Benefits for Initial Echocardiographic Assessment
For patients undergoing echocardiographic quantification of cardiac function, initial assessment of left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) by artificial intelligence (AI) is noninferior to assessment by sonographers, according to a study published online April 5 in Nature.
Bryan He, from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues compared AI to sonographer assessment of LVEF to evaluate the impact of AI in the interpretation workflow. The analysis included 3,495 echocardiographic studies. Both sonographers and cardiologists saved time with the AI-guided workflow, and cardiologists were not able to distinguish between the initial assessments conducted by AI versus the sonographer (blinding index of 0.088).
