Researchers from London and China can use artificial intelligence to spot patients who might develop significant heart problems years in advance.
Researchers from London and China have found that artificial intelligence can spot very early changes in the heart’s structure from an ECG, a common test which shows the heart’s electrical activity.
This could help to predict which patients might develop significant heart problems years in advance, just based on ECG readings.
The advanced algorithm can detect issues in the heart’s valves – which keep blood flowing in the correct direction through the heart’s chambers – even before the appearance of symptoms or physical changes that can be detected by ultrasound scans.
The AI could accurately predict who would go on to develop significant leaks in the heart’s mitral, tricuspid or aortic valves – conditions known as regurgitant valvular heart diseases. It was able to correctly identify the risk of a leaky heart valve in the years following the ECG (from high to low) in around 69-79% of cases.
“Our work is harnessing AI to detect subtle changes at the earliest stage from a simple and common test, and we think this could be really transformative for doctors and patients,” said Arunashis Sau, a cardiology registrar at Imperial College Healthcare and Academic Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London.
“Rather than waiting for symptoms, or relying only on expensive and time-consuming imaging tests, we could use AI-enhanced ECGs to spot those most at risk earlier than ever before. This means that many more people could get the care they need before their hidden condition affects their quality of life or becomes life-threatening,” he continued.
International collaboration
It’s estimated that 41 million people worldwide, including 1.5 million people in the UK, live with these heart valve diseases, which can lead to heart failure, hospital admissions and death. Early diagnosis is key to successful treatment. But the symptoms, which can include shortness of breath, dizziness, feeling tired and having heart palpitations, can be easily confused with other causes, while some patients don’t show any symptoms until the disease is advanced.
The study was part of an international collaboration involving researchers in China, based at Shanghai’s Zhongshan Hospital. AI models were trained using nearly one million ECG and heart ultrasound (echocardiogram) records from more than 400,000 patients in China. The technology was then tested on a separate group of more than 34,000 patients in the US, showing that it works well across ethnically diverse populations and healthcare systems.
This research was funded by the British Heart Foundation and supported by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, a translational research partnership between Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London, which was awarded £95 million in 2022 to continue developing new experimental treatments and diagnostics for patients.
The team’s findings have just been published in The European Heart Journal.
