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Raphael Thys
By giving medical practitioners crucial information, an AI tool that analyses the heart’s function quickly and thoroughly could advance the detection and treatment of cardiac disease in the future. Finding a faster method to diagnose heart illness is crucial because the existing procedure for analysing the findings of MRI heart scans requires a lot of time and resources.
The tool has been created by the University of Sheffield and the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
How can AI help in the diagnosis of heart disease?
The technique, called AI segmentation of cardiac MRI to automate the measurement of cardiac function and volume, uses images from MRI heart scans to automatically identify the heart’s chambers, a procedure that traditionally requires a protracted manual examination.
A patient’s heart health is routinely checked during the heart disease diagnosis process using MRI scans since they provide detailed information on the heart’s pumping action. For the doctors, this procedure takes a lot of time and involves several specialists, including those in cardiac imaging. The professionals must first outline the heart’s scan images with outlines before doing challenging volumetric and mathematical computations to determine the heart’s blood flow in and out.
According to the researchers, the AI technology will help doctors and imaging professionals save up to 30 minutes in each scan, freeing up necessary NHS resources and facilitating an earlier identification of cardiac disease.
Dr. Andrew Swift, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield and a consultant cardiothoracic radiologist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, stated that getting answers promptly and precisely will cut down on the time it takes for patients to start getting the right treatment even more. It takes a lot of time to manually collect sophisticated measures that show how well the left and right sides of the heart are pumping. This issue is solved by the AI segmentation of cardiac MRI for automated measurement of heart function and volume. It might allow hospital staff to take care of more patients instead of spending time on image processing. The clinical and technical know-how that they have in Sheffield is displayed prominently in this superb example of creativity from within the NHS.
Using thousands of photos to test the programme
Over the past three years, the AI technology has been tested on scans from more than 30 institutions in the UK and verified in over 5,000 anonymized patient scans at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. With recent financing from a Medipex NHS Innovation Award victory, the team is now trying to make the tool accessible to a larger portion of the NHS.
In a sizable fraction of heart disease diagnosis instances, the tool’s accuracy is comparable to, if not better than, manual analysis.
They have a long and proud tradition of being innovators in new research and new development that may be used for the benefit of more patients, according to Director of Innovation at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, Professor Wendy Tindale OBE. They are honoured that this distinguished regional awards programme has recognised the skills of their scientific and clinical experts in discovering and seeking out answers to healthcare problems.