To assess the diagnostic value of machine learning-based texture feature analysis of late gadolinium enhancement images on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for assessing the presence of ventricular tachyarrhythmia (VT) in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

This retrospective study included 64 patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy who underwent cardiac MRI and 24-hour Holter monitoring within 1 year before cardiac MRI. There were 42 men and 22 women with a mean age of 48.13±13.06 (SD) years (range: 20–70 years). Quantitative textural features were extracted via manually placed regions of interest in areas with high and intermediate signal intensity on late gadolinium-chelate enhanced images. Feature selection and dimension reduction were performed. The diagnostic performances of machine learning classifiers including support vector machines, Naive Bayes, k-nearest-neighbors, and random forest for predicting the presence of VT were assessed using the results of 24-hour Holter monitoring as the reference test. All machine learning models were assessed with and without the application of the synthetic minority over-sampling technique (SMOTE).

Of the 64 patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, 21/64 (32.8%) had VT. Of eight machine learning models investigated, k-nearest-neighbors with SMOTE exhibited the best diagnostic accuracy for the presence or absence of VT. k-nearest-neighbors with SMOTE correctly identified 40/42 (95.2%) VT-positive patients and 40/43 (93.0%) VT-negative patients, yielding 95.2% sensitivity (95% CI: 82.5%–99.1%), 93.0% specificity (95% CI: 79.8%–98.1%) and 94.1% accuracy (95% CI: 88.8%–98%).

Machine learning-based texture analysis of late gadolinium-chelate enhancement-positive areas is a promising tool for the classification of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients with and without VT.