Key result
AI models show strong diagnostic and predictive performance in EP despite limited prospective validation.
Why the study?
The high volume of data in cardiac electrophysiology strains provider workflows while presenting an opportunity for artificial intelligence to extract clinically actionable patterns from complex electrical signals.
Artificial intelligence shows significant potential to modernize cardiac electrophysiology through improved diagnostics and risk stratification, but widespread clinical adoption requires external validation and prospective outcome trials.
Caution against routine AI adoption in electrophysiology; leaves open the need for external validation and prospective outcome trials.
Cardiac electrophysiology (EP) is inherently data-centric, spanning brief 12-lead electrocardiograms (ECGs), high-density electroanatomic maps, and continuous device-based monitoring. This data volume can strain provider workflows while creating an opportunity for artificial intelligence (AI). Machine learning (ML) and its deep learning subfield extract clinically actionable patterns from complex electrical signals. This narrative review summarizes contemporary AI applications across the major domains of EP. In arrhythmia detection, deep neural networks classify rhythms at a level comparable to cardiologists on internal test sets, identify occult atrial fibrillation (AF) from a normal sinus-rhythm ECG, and, through consumer wearables, extend screening to ambulatory populations. In catheter ablation, an AI algorithm that adjudicates intracardiac electrogram dispersion improved single-procedure freedom from AF in a randomized trial of persistent AF, and ML models help predict arrhythmia recurrence; we distinguish these from adjacent non-AI technologies, such as computed-tomography integration and three-dimensional mapping, that reduce fluoroscopy but are not themselves AI. In cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs), AI-based filtering lowers false-positive alert burden, and multi-parametric algorithms provide earlier prediction of heart-failure decompensation. ML models may refine patient selection for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) and, using late-gadolinium-enhancement cardiac magnetic resonance, may sharpen arrhythmic-risk and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) decision-making. AI-enhanced ECG broadens the standard ECG into a low-cost screening tool for channelopathies, dyskalemias, and ventricular dysfunction. Important barriers remain, including limited external validation, incomplete explainability, and a scarcity of prospective outcome trials.
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Gerlt et al. (2026) conducted a review in Cardiac arrhythmias and electrophysiology. Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning and Deep Learning) vs. Conventional methods was evaluated. Artificial intelligence models in cardiac electrophysiology demonstrate strong diagnostic and predictive performance across arrhythmia detection, ablation, and device management, though prospective validation remains limited.
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