Park, Hyung Bok

BACKGROUND: Accurate assessment of left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) gradients is critical for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy management, yet Doppler-based measurements are technically demanding and require expertise. The objective of this work was to develop a multi-view deep learning model capable of classifying LVOT obstruction (>20 mm Hg) using routine 2-dimensional echocardiographic windows without reliance on Doppler imaging. METHODS: We trained and externally validated a cross-attention-based video-to-video fusion framework that integrated EchoPrime-derived video representations from 3 standard transthoracic echocardiographic views to classify LVOT gradients. RESULTS: Training was performed on a derivation cohort (N=1833) from a tertiary care system in the United States, with model performance evaluated on an internally held-out test set (N=275) and a Korean external validation cohort (N=46). Single-view baselines showed limited discrimination (external area under the receiver operating curves, 0.47–0.70). Conversely, the domain-specific foundational model (EchoPrime) achieved superior single-view performance (area under the receiver operating curves, 0.75–0.80 internal; 0.79–0.83 external), highlighting the importance of echo-specific pretraining and temporal modeling. The proposed multi-view fusion further enhanced predictive performance, with the late fusion model reaching an area under the receiver operating curve of 0.84 on the external cohort with significant population-shift. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest LVOT physiology is encoded in routine 2-dimensional imaging and can be leveraged for clinically relevant gradient classification without Doppler input. The proposed artificial intelligence-guided strategy demonstrates substantial cost savings compared with the screen-all approach. By integrating complementary spatial-temporal information across multiple views, our approach generalizes robustly across populations and may enable real-time decision support, extend LVOT assessment to portable or resource-limited settings, and complement Doppler-based evaluation for longitudinal hypertrophic cardiomyopathy management.

Abstract Background Accurate assessment of left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) gradients is critical for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) management, yet Doppler-based measurements are technically demanding and require expertise. Objective To develop a multi-view deep learning model capable of classifying LVOT obstruction (> 20mmHg) using routine 2D echocardiographic windows without reliance on Doppler imaging. Methods We trained and externally validated a cross-attention-based video-to-video fusion framework that integrated EchoPrime-derived video representations from three standard transthoracic echocardiographic views to classify LVOT gradients. Results Training was performed on a derivation cohort (N = 1833) from a tertiary care system in the United States, with model performance evaluated on an internal held-out test set (N = 275) and a Korean external validation cohort (N = 46). Single-view baselines showed limited discrimination (external AUROCs 0.47–0.70). Conversely, domain-specific foundational model (EchoPrime) achieved superior single-view performance (AUROCs 0.75–0.80 internal; 0.79–0.83 external), highlighting the importance of echo-specific pretraining and temporal modeling. The proposed multi-view fusion further enhanced predictive performance, with the late fusion model reaching an AUROC of 0.84 on the external cohort with significant population-shift. Conclusions These results suggest LVOT physiology is encoded in routine 2D imaging and can be leveraged for clinically relevant gradient classification without Doppler input- proposed AI-guided strategy demonstrates substantial cost savings compared with the screen-all approach. By integrating complementary spatial-temporal information across multiple views, our approach generalizes robustly across populations and may enable real-time decision support, extend LVOT assessment to portable or resource-limited settings, and complement Doppler-based evaluation for longitudinal HCM management.