The use of artificial intelligence (AI) can provide an automated and accurate tool to measure a common marker of heart disease in patients undergoing lung cancer screening, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). "The new cholesterol guidelines encourage using the calcium score to help physicians and patients decide whether to take a statin," said study co-senior author Michael T. Lu, M.D., M.P.H., director of AI in the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center (CIRC) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston in a press release about the findings. "For select patients at intermediate risk of heart disease, if the calcium score is 0, statin can be deferred. If the calcium score is high, then those patients should be on a statin." In this study, researchers trained a deep-learning system on cardiac CTs and chest CTs in which the coronary artery calcium had been measured manually.