"With the successful execution of our model, we predicted the association of highly significant cardiovascular disease genes tied to demographic variables like race, gender and age." said Zeeshan Ahmed, a core faculty member at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH) and lead author of the study, published in Genomics. According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally, yet it is estimated that more than 75 percent of premature cardiovascular disease is preventable. Atrial fibrillation and heart failure contribute to about 45 percent of all cardiovascular disease deaths. Despite significant advancements in cardiovascular disease diagnostics, prevention and treatment, about half of the affected patients reportedly die within five years of receiving a diagnosis because of a variety of reasons. Researchers said the use of AI and machine learning can accelerate our ability to identify genes that have important implications for cardiovascular disease, which can lead to improvements in diagnoses and treatment.

An international team of researchers has developed a way to use artificial intelligence to predict the risk of a patient developing cardiovascular disease. In their paper published in the journal Nature Biological Engineering, the group describes using retinal blood vessel scans as a data-source for a deep learning system to teach it to recognize the signs of cardiovascular disease in people. For over 100 years, doctors have peered into the eyes of patients looking for changes in retinal vasculature--blood vessels in the retina that can reflect the impact of high blood pressure over a period of time. Such an impact can be an indicator of impending cardiovascular disease. Over time, medical scientists have developed instruments that allow eye doctors to get a better look at the parts of the eye most susceptible to damage from hypertension and have used them as a part of a process to diagnose patients that are likely to develop the disease. But such tools still require a medical professional to make the final call.