An Open-Source Analysis of Cardiomyopathy Using Machine Learning and Electrocardiograms

<b>Background/Objectives:</b> Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) are common cardiomyopathies associated with heart failure. Electrocardiogram (ECG) screening before an echocardiogram could help streamline diagnosis, particularly in rural areas. Prior ECG-machine learning (ML) studies do not use open-source data when studying cardiomyopathy, and very few proprietary studies directly compare HCM and DCM or address ECG differences within obstructive (HOCM) and non-obstructive HCM (HNCM). <b>Methods:</b> Standard and vectorcardiogram-derived (VCG) ECG features were extracted from the MIMIC-IV-ECG database. The final cohort comprised 599 patients (HCM = 208 [HOCM = 99, HNCM = 53, unknown = 56]; DCM = 391 [ischemic cardiomyopathy with left ventricular dilation = 250, non-ischemic = 141]). Logistic regression (LR) and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) with five-fold cross-validation separated HCM from ischemic cardiomyopathy with left ventricular dilation (DCM-I) and non-ischemic DCM (DCM-NI), and HOCM from HNCM. <b>Results:</b> Using the area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUC-ROC) as the performance metric, LR achieved high discrimination of HCM from DCM-I (0.92) and DCM-NI (0.90). However, differentiating HOCM from HNCM proved more difficult (XGBoost = 0.81; LR = 0.75). Both DCM subtypes (especially ischemic) showed lower QRS amplitudes and right-posterior ventricular gradient orientation; HCM displayed higher amplitudes and larger, more complex T-loops. Within HCM, HOCM had stronger leftward electrical activity and more dipolar to non-dipolar QRS energy after singular value decomposition. <b>Conclusions:</b> Using only open-access data, we demonstrate an interpretable ECG-based pipeline that discriminates cardiomyopathy and highlights distinct features. While detecting obstruction remains difficult, ECG features provide measurable separation, supporting possible diagnostic screening and offering a reproducible framework for future studies.