UK-based Ultromics wants to reduce the number of patients in which heart disease is misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. To this end, the company has developed a system that can use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse ultrasound images much more comprehensively than cardiologists, improving the accuracy of diagnoses from 80% to more than 90%.
Diagnosing heart disease involves echocardiography, a technology that uses sound waves to image the heart. The medical images this produces are reviewed by cardiologists, who in doing so can only include a small part of the data available in such an image in the diagnosis they make. "Currently, only 80% of diagnoses are made correctly, meaning that one in five people are misdiagnosed," said Ross Upton, founder and CEO of Ultromics, in an interview with the BBC.
Originated from graduation project
Upton developed the system in collaboration with Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the UK University of Oxford Paul Leeson during his final year project. For this, Upton conducted research in collaboration with the UK National Health Services (NHS). The project aims to improve the accuracy with which heart disease is diagnosed and eventually led to Ultromics.
A database of medical images from Oxford University is used to develop the system. Medical images from this database are analysed, using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse 80,000 different points on the images. These measurements are combined to create patterns that can be used to identify different forms of heart disease. By looking for these patterns, the system can determine from medical images whether or not a patient has a particular heart disease.
Diagnosing from patterns
"Currently, when a doctor looks at a scan, he selects five or six things on this image to determine whether someone has a disease. Our system looks at 80,000 things on an image and uses AI to create a pattern from these measurements to diagnose diseases," Upton explains. Many of the 80,000 measurements the system analyses cannot be detected by doctors with the naked eye, according to Upton. The more extensive analysis performed by the system increases the accuracy of diagnoses of coronary heart disease from 80% to more than 90%, according to Ultromics.
Ultromics wants to make the system available to the NHS free of charge. Upton points out that many companies conduct research in collaboration with the NHS, but often commercialise their final product in the United States (US). "We give our product back to the NHS for free to help drive future innovations," Upton tells the BBC. In other markets, Ultromics does plan to commercialise the product.
Cardiologists support
Upton stresses that the product is not intended to replace cardiologists, but rather to support them and help them work more accurately. The system has already been tested in clinical trials at six cardiology departments, the results of which are currently being verified by experts. If the results are confirmed, Ultromics' system is expected to be made available to the NHS in summer 2018.
Source: Ultromics
Source: BBC
Source photo: Pixabay / valelopardo
