UWL to lead pioneering research project funded by British Heart Foundation
UWL to lead pioneering research project funded by British Heart Foundation
AI experts from the University of West London and clinicians from Imperial College London have been awarded £1.5 million in funding by the British Heart Foundation to lead a nationwide research project on integrating AI into cardiovascular medicine.
The five-year project, overseen by the British Society of Echocardiography, will see experts from UWL work with physiologists from 21 NHS hospitals to build on the University’s research integrating AI into echocardiography – the use of ultrasound scans to examine the action of the heart – to develop automated tools that clinicians will be able to use for diagnosis and prognosis purposes. Currently, ultrasound heart scans are analysed manually, an expensive process that is incredibly time-consuming and can be unreliable.
Led by Professor Massoud Zolgharni, Professor of Computer Vision at UWL, AI software will be trained to automatically process ultrasound heart scans and feed this information back to sonographers in real time. It is hoped this innovative use of AI will revolutionise the current practice of analysing ultrasound scans by making highly accurate readings immediately available in a way that will encourage the development of new diagnostic tools in cardiovascular medicine.
Professor Darrel Francis from the National Heart and Lung Institute who leads the clinical team expressed his support for the project, saying:
We have worked for many years with Professor Zolgharni's team at UWL, and the success of this collaboration brought unanimous support from the UK-wide British Society of Echocardiography. We are delighted that the British Heart Foundation has recognised UWL’s new technology as world-leading and deserving of clinical evaluation across many sites.”
Speaking about the project, Professor Amir Alani, Executive Dean of the School of Computing and Engineering, said:
This is another example of the pioneering and impactful work we are undertaking that has the potential to make a massive difference across the world. This project has the potential to transform the future of cardiovascular medicine and, more importantly, to save countless lives.”
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