Major heart scan breakthrough could predict disease 5 years early

Doctors could soon use artificial intelligence to predict a patient’s chance of heart failure at least five years before it develops and take action to stop it. A team of researchers at the University of Oxford trained an algorithm using CT scans from almost 60,000 people. The AI tool searches for textural changes in the fat around the heart that indicate inflamed and unhealthy muscle. These signals are not visible to the human eye with any routine medical imaging tests.

When the tool was tested using scans from a further 13,400 people, the algorithm could predict the risk that someone would develop heart failure in the next five years with 86% accuracy. It was able to identify slower development of the condition and spot the patients who were most at risk — something that has not been possible before, according to the researchers.

Study leader Professor Charalambos Antoniades, British Heart Foundation professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Oxford, said the work harnessed the latest developments in bioscience and computing to “take a big step forward in treating heart failure”.

He added: “Our new AI tool is able to take cardiac CT scan data and produce an absolute risk score for each patient without any need for human input.

“Although this study used cardiac CT scans, we are now working towards applying this method to any CT scan of the chest, performed for any reason.

“This will allow doctors to make more informed decisions about the best way to treat patients, giving the most intensive treatment to those at the highest risk.”

Around 920,000 people in the UK are living with heart failure, which means their heart is not pumping blood as well as it should.

The condition is often caused by damage during a heart attack but other conditions can also cause problems with the heart muscle that gradually lead to heart failure.

Some 350,000 UK patients are referred for a cardiac CT scan each year to look for fatty plaques in coronary arteries.

The team is now seeking regulatory approval to roll out their tool across the NHS and add it to the normal cardiac CT scan analysis done in radiology departments.

Prof Antoniades added: “We hope that, if this program is rolled out nationwide, it could reduce hospital pressures by helping patients live well for longer.”

Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, clinical director at the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research, said: “Heart failure is consistently diagnosed too late, sometimes only when a patient is admitted to hospital.

“Late diagnosis may mean patients already have severe damage to their heart muscle which might have been avoided.

“This tool could help doctors spot heart failure earlier, by monitoring more closely those at highest risk.

“Early heart failure diagnosis is crucial — it means doctors can better manage someone’s condition which gives them a fighting chance of living longer in better health.

“This study demonstrates the power of harnessing technology to unlock improvements in cardiovascular care.”

The findings were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.