Researchers at Glasgow University are looking to harness AI to improve heart disease treatment pathways.
Experts at the university want to develop cutting-edge computational tools to enhance outcomes for heart disease patients fitted with stents or balloon devices.
Currently, the life-saving percutaneous coronary intervention, or PCI, is highly effective in unblocking arteries from plaque buildup and delivering drugs to stop them narrowing again.
However, more than a quarter of the patients undergoing the procedure will require repeat treatments – putting them at risk of future problems and heart attacks.
Now, in a £1.25 million project with the newly-established EPSRC Centre for Future PCI Planning, the Glasgow researchers will work on ways of enhancing PCIs using technology.
It will unite engineers, mathematicians, statisticians and doctors at the University of Glasgow with partners in industry, medicine and academia to take a new approach to planning treatment of the disease.
Dr Sean McGinty, of the James Watt School of Engineering, is the project’s principal investigator. He said: “Our population is living longer than ever before, partly because we now have very good treatments for heart artery disease. While that is undoubtedly good news for individuals and their families, healthcare services are being increasingly stretched.
“What we’re aiming to do with this project is develop faster and more robust methods to improve the effectiveness of treatments and significantly reduce the number of repeat PCI procedures. As well as delivering better results for patients, this will make a big difference to healthcare budgets in the future.
“By the end of this project, we will have developed a suite of computational tools, that we aim to integrate into the imaging and diagnostic systems already in use to deliver PCI treatments. We’re looking forward to playing our part in improving PCI procedures and providing the best possible outcomes for patients and health services alike.”
Blockage of heart arteries is the most common type of cardiovascular disease, contributing to around 16% of the world’s deaths each year. It occurs when plaque builds up in the walls of the arteries that deliver blood to the heart muscle, narrowing the arteries and restricting blood flow.
Currently, doctors have limited tools to guide them how best to treat the condition and to predict whether the PCI will be successful for an individual patient. Having a clearer idea of what to expect before the procedure is carried out gives doctors the chance to deliver the best outcome. The Centre aims to revolutionise the way in which procedures are undertaken, by developing computational tools that enable the tailoring of the procedure for each individual patient.
The key to achieving this is the use of cutting-edge techniques to analyse images of the narrowed heart arteries, creating a more complete picture of the plaque buildup. Over the next four years, the Centre’s researchers will find new ways to harness the full potential of the information available from imaging to improve the outcomes of each patient’s procedure.
Using high-quality images that have been gathered from clinical trials in leading centres in Scotland and across the world, the team will build on existing mathematical models to develop better ways to visualise each stage of PCI procedures. Importantly, the team are aiming to build these tools whilst reducing the computer processing expense by harnessing the power of AI.
