How AI Can Predict Heart Attacks and Strokes

Artificial intelligence is making its way into health care, and one of its first stops is making sense of all of those scans that doctors order. Already, studies have shown that AI-based tools can, in some cases, pick out abnormal growths that could be cancerous tumors better than doctors can, mainly because digesting and synthesizing huge volumes of information is what AI does best. In a study published Feb. 14 in Circulation, researchers in the U.K. and the U.S. report that an AI program can reliably predict heart attacks and strokes. Kristopher Knott, a research fellow at the British Heart Foundation, and his team conducted the largest study yet involving cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) and AI. CMR is a scan that measures blood flow to the heart by detecting how much of a special contrast agent heart muscle picks up; the stronger the blood flow, the less likely there will be blockages in the heart vessels.