1,800 stress echocardiography paired studies (rest and peak stress) for ischemia classification

Overview

Stress echocardiography remains a cornerstone of non-invasive ischemia assessment, yet visual wall-motion scoring is highly operator-dependent and shows significant inter-reader variability even among experienced cardiologists. We are developing an automated wall-motion abnormality detection system trained on paired rest-and-peak-stress cine-loop acquisitions, targeting sensitivity and specificity benchmarks comparable to Level III expert readers for detecting hemodynamically significant coronary artery disease across all three major coronary territories. Each study pair must include resting and peak-stress cine-loop acquisitions — obtained via exercise treadmill, upright cycle ergometer, or pharmacological dobutamine infusion protocol with or without atropine augmentation — in at least four standard views: apical 4-chamber, apical 2-chamber, parasternal long-axis, and parasternal short-axis at the mid-papillary muscle level. Apical 3-chamber views are requested where acquired. Side-by-side quad-screen DICOM files in the standard stress-echo cine display format — rest and stress loops displayed simultaneously at matched cardiac cycles — are acceptable and preferred, as they reflect the real-world reporting workflow and facilitate direct comparison learning. Frame rates must be sufficient to resolve individual cardiac phases at elevated heart rates, requiring a minimum of 50 fps at peak stress and 25 fps at rest. Second harmonic B-mode imaging is required; studies acquired with ultrasound contrast agent (UCA) — specifically SonoVue/Lumason or Definity/Luminity — are explicitly welcomed alongside non-contrast acquisitions and must be flagged in the metadata with contrast agent name and dose administered. Doppler tissue imaging (DTI) of the mitral annulus at rest is requested as a supplementary acquisition where available, providing diastolic functional context alongside ischemia assessment. Mandatory structured clinical labels include: stress protocol type, peak heart rate achieved, percentage of age-predicted maximum heart rate, Duke Treadmill Score where applicable, rate-pressure product at peak stress, wall-motion score index (WMSI) at rest and at peak stress per the ASE 17-segment left ventricular model, and the overall study conclusion classified as normal, inducible ischemia, fixed scar, or non-diagnostic. Per-segment wall-motion labels at rest and peak stress — normokinesis, hypokinesis, akinesis, or dyskinesis — are required for all 1,800 study pairs, structured as JSON arrays indexed to ASE segment numbering. Invasive coronary angiography correlation data, including percentage stenosis per vessel and Syntax score where available within 12 months of the stress study, should be linked pseudonymously to the imaging data to provide ground-truth coronary anatomy labels for ischemia territory mapping. QA exclusion criteria: studies with suboptimal image quality precluding wall-motion assessment in more than two of the 17 segments at peak stress must be excluded or clearly flagged as non-diagnostic to prevent label noise during model training.

Progress

Data Specifications

Use Cases

• Training and validating Medical imaging AI/ML models
• Benchmarking Medical imaging detection and segmentation algorithms
• Building de-identified Medical imaging research datasets for academic studies
• Augmenting existing Medical imaging datasets to reduce class imbalance