Clinicians often use a medical test called a 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) to diagnose heart problems. It uses electrodes placed on the chest and limbs to record the heart's electrical activity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are commonly used to assist with diagnoses based on ECGs. But current tools typically require large amounts of training data, hand-labeled with the presence or absence of specific diseases, which can make the tools less adaptable to other clinical tasks.