Hybrid CNN–GRU Framework For Automated Diagnosis Of Heart Failure Using Medical Imaging
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29284/pfx4pg76Keywords:
Heart Failure Diagnosis; Medical Imaging; Hybrid CNN–GRU Model; Deep Learning; Automated Disease Detection; Cardiac Image Analysis; Feature Extraction; Temporal Dependency Modeling; Intelligent Healthcare Systems; Clinical Decision SupportAbstract
Heart failure (HF) remains one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, necessitating early and accurate diagnostic solutions to support clinical decision-making. Recent advances in medical imaging and deep learning have shown significant promise; however, existing approaches often struggle to effectively capture both spatial and temporal characteristics inherent in cardiac data. This paper proposes a hybrid Convolutional Neural Network–Gated Recurrent Unit (CNN–GRU) framework for the automated diagnosis of heart failure using medical imaging modalities. The CNN component is employed to extract high-level spatial features from cardiac images, while the GRU network models temporal dependencies and sequential patterns associated with cardiac functional variations. The integrated architecture enables robust feature representation, improved learning efficiency, and reduced computational complexity compared to conventional recurrent models. Extensive experiments conducted on benchmark cardiac imaging datasets demonstrate that the proposed CNN–GRU framework achieves superior diagnostic performance, attaining an accuracy of 98.2%, sensitivity of 97.6%, specificity of 98.8%, and F1-score of 97.9%, outperforming standalone CNN, LSTM-based, and traditional machine-learning methods. The results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid framework in delivering reliable, automated heart failure diagnosis, offering a scalable and clinically applicable solution for intelligent cardiovascular healthcare systems.
References
[1] Acharya, U. R., Fujita, H., Oh, S. L., Hagiwara, Y., Tan, J. H., Adam, M., & Tan, R. S. (2019). Deep convolutional neural network for the automated diagnosis of congestive heart failure using ECG signals. Applied Intelligence, 49(1), 16-27.
[2] Madani, A., Ong, J. R., Tibrewal, A., & Mofrad, M. R. (2018). Deep echocardiography: data-efficient supervised and semi-supervised deep learning towards automated diagnosis of cardiac disease. NPJ digital medicine, 1(1), 1-11.
[3] Yasmin, F., Shah, S. M. I., Naeem, A., Shujauddin, S. M., Jabeen, A., Kazmi, S., ... & Lak, H. M. (2021). Artificial intelligence in the diagnosis and detection of heart failure: the past, present, and future. Reviews in cardiovascular medicine, 22(4), 1095-1113.
[4] Akerman, A. P., Porumb, M., Scott, C. G., Beqiri, A., Chartsias, A., Ryu, A. J., ... & Pellikka, P. A. (2023). Automated echocardiographic detection of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction using artificial intelligence. JACC: Advances, 2(6), 100452.
[5] Jahmunah, V., Oh, S. L., Wei, J. K. E., Ciaccio, E. J., Chua, K., San, T. R., & Acharya, U. R. (2019). Computer-aided diagnosis of congestive heart failure using ECG signals–A review. Physica Medica, 62, 95-104.
[6] Slomka, P. J., Dey, D., Sitek, A., Motwani, M., Berman, D. S., & Germano, G. (2017). Cardiac imaging: working towards fully-automated machine analysis & interpretation. Expert review of medical devices, 14(3), 197-212.
[7] Oo, M. M., Gao, C., Cole, C., Hummel, Y., Guignard-Duff, M., Jefferson, E., ... & Lang, C. C. (2024). Artificial intelligence-assisted automated heart failure detection and classification from electronic health records. ESC heart failure, 11(5), 2769-2777.
[8] Agibetov, A., Kammerlander, A., Duca, F., Nitsche, C., Koschutnik, M., Donà, C., ... & Bonderman, D. (2021). Convolutional neural networks for fully automated diagnosis of cardiac amyloidosis by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. Journal of Personalized Medicine, 11(12), 1268.
[9] Medhi, D., Kamidi, S. R., Sree, K. P. M., Shaikh, S., Rasheed, S., Murichathil, A. H. T., & Nazir, Z. (2024). Artificial intelligence and its role in diagnosing heart failure: a narrative review. Cureus, 16(5), e59661.
[10] Nargesi, A. A., Adejumo, P., Dhingra, L. S., Rosand, B., Hengartner, A., Coppi, A., ... & Khera, R. (2025). Automated identification of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction using deep learning-based natural language processing. Heart Failure, 13(1), 75-87.
[11] Yoganathan, T., Sooknah, M., Martin-McNulty, B., Lee, J., Schmid, F., Lefebvre, A., ... & Riegler, J. (2025). Automated cardiac MRI analysis for robust profiling of heart failure models in mice. Scientific Reports.
[12] Matsumoto, T., Kodera, S., Shinohara, H., Ieki, H., Yamaguchi, T., Higashikuni, Y., ... & Komuro, I. (2020). Diagnosing heart failure from chest X-ray images using deep learning. International Heart Journal, 61(4), 781-786.
[13] Rajasekaran, C., Jayanthi, K. B., Sudha, S., & Kuchelar, R. (2019, July). Automated diagnosis of cardiovascular disease through measurement of Intima media thickness using deep neural networks. In 2019 41st Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) (pp. 6636-6639). IEEE.
[14] Čelutkienė, J., Plymen, C. M., Flachskampf, F. A., de Boer, R. A., Grapsa, J., Manka, R., ... & Nihoyannopoulos, P. (2018). Innovative imaging methods in heart failure: a shifting paradigm in cardiac assessment. Position statement on behalf of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. European journal of heart failure, 20(12), 1615-1633.
[15] Que, Q., Tang, Z., Wang, R., Zeng, Z., Wang, J., Chua, M., ... & Veeravalli, B. (2018, July). CardioXNet: automated detection for cardiomegaly based on deep learning. In 2018 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) (pp. 612-615). IEEE.
[16] Gupta, A., Kumar, R., Arora, H. S., & Raman, B. (2019). MIFH: A machine intelligence framework for heart disease diagnosis. IEEE access, 8, 14659-14674.
[17] Karboub, K., Tabaa, M., Monteiro, F., Dellagi, S., Moutaouakkil, F., & Dandache, A. (2020). Automated diagnosis system for outpatients and inpatients with cardiovascular diseases. IEEE Sensors Journal, 21(2), 1935-1946.
[18] Holste, G., Oikonomou, E. K., Mortazavi, B. J., Wang, Z., & Khera, R. (2024). Efficient deep learning-based automated diagnosis from echocardiography with contrastive self-supervised learning. Communications Medicine, 4(1), 133.
[19] Hsu, L. Y., Jacobs, M., Benovoy, M., Ta, A. D., Conn, H. M., Winkler, S., ... & Arai, A. E. (2018). Diagnostic performance of fully automated pixel-wise quantitative myocardial perfusion imaging by cardiovascular magnetic resonance. JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging, 11(5), 697-707.
[20] Tan, J., Au, A., Meng, Q., FinesilverSmith, S., Simpson, J., Rueckert, D., ... & Kainz, B. (2020, October). Automated detection of congenital heart disease in fetal ultrasound screening. In International Workshop on Advances in Simplifying Medical Ultrasound (pp. 243-252). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

