ObjectiveElectrocardiography (ECGs) has been a vital tool for cardiovascular disease (CVD) diagnosis, which visually depicts the heart's electrical activity. To enhance automatic classification between normal and diseased ECG, it is essential to extract consistent and qualitative features. MethodsPrecision of ECG classification through a hybrid Deep Learning (DL) approach leverages both Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture and Variational Autoencoder (VAE) techniques. By combining these methods, we aim to achieve more accurate and robust ECG interpretation. The method is trained and tested over the PTB-XL dataset, which contains 21,799 with 12-lead ECGs from 18,869 patients, each spanning 10 s. The classification evaluation of five super-classes and 23 sub-classes of CVD, with the proposed CNN-VAE model is compared. ResultsThe classification of various CVDs resulted in the highest accuracy of 98.51%, specificity of 98.12%, sensitivity of 97.9%, and F1-score of 97.95%. We have also achieved the minimum false positive and false negative rates of 2.07 and 1.87, respectively, during validation. The results are validated upon the annotations given by individual cardiologists, who assigned potentially multiple ECG statements to each record. ConclusionWhen compared to other deep learning methods, our suggested CNN-VAE model performs significantly better in the testing phase. This study proposes a new architecture of combining CNN-VAE for CVD classification from ECG data, this can help clinicians to identify the disease earlier and carry out further treatment. The CNN-VAE model can better characterize input signals due to its hybrid architecture.