Artificial intelligence predicts outcomes for heart patients

For the first time researchers that we part-fund have used Artificial Intelligence to predict outcomes for heart patients using MRI scans, enabling doctors to find the best treatments for individual patients. The computer program, called 4Dsurvival, takes each patient's scan and tracks the motion of the heart at hundreds of points every second. From these 3D pictures of the moving heart the machine learns to predict the risk of dying from heart failure. So far, the team at Imperial College London and the Medical Research Council have used the technology to predict the prognosis for 302 people with a heart condition called pulmonary hypertension (PH) a rare but serious condition, which damages the arteries in the lungs, and can be fatal. The technology outperformed doctors, being able to correctly predict a patient's prognosis 75% of the time. It is hoped that the new technology will help doctors to spot patients likely to deteriorate quickly enabling them to act immediately to halt the disease's progression.