Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has adopted an artificial intelligence tool to give doctors real-time views of the brain.
The RapidAI advanced imaging platform will be used across various sites in its stroke network.
The tool is used widely across the world, with Leeds Teaching becoming the first in the UK. Leeds Teaching commented “It’s already leading to positive results for patients who may have died or suffered long-term disability if their strokes had gone untreated.”
The imaging system uses artificial intelligence to analyse a patient’s brain scans, providing results to stroke teams within minutes. By processing a patient’s CT perfusion scan, for example, the Rapid platform can quickly identify the amount of brain tissue that can be potentially saved if a procedure like a mechanical thrombectomy is performed.
Results quickly show whether a blood vessel is blocked, how much blood is flowing through, how much of the brain is likely “dead” and how much can be potentially saved—refining and speeding up the decision-making process for doctors.
Consultant neuro-radiologist, Dr Tony Goddard, along with his colleagues at Leeds General Infirmary and St James’s Hospitals, has been using the Rapid platform for his patients in Leeds and other patients referred from Bradford, Wakefield and Calderdale.
Dr Goddard said: “The information RapidAI provides is very often a key part of a life-saving procedure, and patients who enter the angiogram room pre-treatment unable to move and talk, can be moving and sometimes talking by the end of the procedure.”
“We use RapidAI for most patients now and it is particularly beneficial for those who wake up with stroke symptoms for whom there is currently no alternative way to assess treatment for these patients as accurately.”
Marc Hofmans of RapidAI said: “With RapidAI technology at multiple sites, when potential stroke patients present throughout the region, there can be an even more immediate and coordinated response, informing treatment and transfer decisions, saving critical time, and contributing to better patient outcomes.”
