A collaboration between Ultromics, a specialist AI system to support clinicians in the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease has partnered with the Mayo Clinic to quantify cardiac involvement in COVID-19 and help triage high-risk patients with myocardial injury.
The research team is applying the artificial intelligence system to map how the COVID-19 virus attacks the heart, in response to findings that the disease impacts one in ten victims with heart disease and also significantly weakens the hearts of other sufferers.
The UK based company will work with the Minnesota based centre of cardiology to explore and analyse echocardiograms of COVID-19 victims. The research team will be looking for clues about how the virus affects the human cardiovascular system and will produce a map of the cardiac features of COVID-19.
The Mayo Clinic will assist Ultromics in the development of the image analysis application programme that automates the analysis on echocardiograms. The multi-site study will look at 500 COVID-19 positive men and women, aged between 18 and 89. These participants will have undergone a clinically indicated echocardiography exam during a three-month period. The primary objective is the assessment of automated cardiac measurements, ejection fraction and Global Longitudinal Strain, for the classification of COVID-19 patient outcomes.
Ross Upton CEO of Ultromics “to date, there is no way of linking the impact of the virus to predicted patient outcomes. By applying our technology to the evaluation of COVID associated echocardiograms, we can help understand the characteristics of cardiac involvement.”
“We hope that by discovering a way to do this, patient management can be optimised – this is incredibly important where resources are scarce. Most importantly, we can give physicians the gift of time to treat those most in danger.”
The study aims to provide a non-invasive method for bedside assessment of patients with suspected cardiac complications of COVID-19.
