Optimized Lightweight Architecture for Coronary Artery Disease Classification in Medical Imaging

Background/Objectives: The early and accurate detection of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is crucial for preventing life-threatening complications, particularly among athletes engaged in high-intensity endurance sports. This demographic faces unique cardiovascular risks, as prolonged and intense physical exertion can exacerbate underlying CAD conditions. Studies indicate that while athletes typically exhibit enhanced cardiovascular health, this demographic is not immune to Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) risks. Research has shown that approximately 1–2% of competitive athletes suffer from CAD-related complications, with sudden cardiac arrest being the leading cause of mortality in athletes over 35 years old. High-intensity endurance sports can exacerbate underlying CAD conditions due to the prolonged physical stress placed on the cardiovascular system, making early detection crucial. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a lightweight deep learning model for CAD detection tailored to the unique challenges of diagnosing athletes. Methods: This study introduces a lightweight deep learning model specifically designed for CAD detection in athletes. By integrating ResNet-inspired residual connections into the VGG16 architecture, the model achieves a balance of high diagnostic accuracy and computational efficiency. By incorporating ResNet-inspired residual connections into the VGG16 architecture, the model enhances gradient flow, mitigates vanishing gradient issues, and improves feature extraction of subtle morphological variations in coronary lesions. Its lightweight design, with only 1.2 million parameters and 3.5 GFLOPs, ensures suitability for real-time deployment in resource-constrained clinical environments, such as sports clinics and mobile diagnostic systems, where rapid and efficient diagnostics are essential for high-risk populations. Results: The proposed model achieved superior performance compared to state-of-the-art architectures, with an accuracy of 90.3%, recall of 89%, precision of 90%, and an AUC-ROC of 0.912. These metrics highlight its robustness in detecting and classifying CAD in athletes. The model lightweight architecture, with only 1.2 million parameters and 3.5 GFLOPs, ensures computational efficiency and suitability for real-time clinical applications, particularly in resource-constrained settings. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the potential of a lightweight, deep learning-based diagnostic tool for CAD detection in athletes, achieving a balance of high diagnostic accuracy and computational efficiency. Future work should focus on integrating broader dataset validations and enhancing model explainability to improve adoption in real-world clinical scenarios.