A new ΑΙ system developed at Imperial College London could accelerate the discovery of treatments for heart disease by combining detailed heart scans with huge medical databases.
Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death across the EU, accounting for around 1.7 million deaths every year, so researchers believe smarter tools are urgently needed.
The AI model, known as CardioKG, uses imaging data from thousands of UK Biobank participants, including people with heart failure, heart attacks and atrial fibrillation, alongside healthy volunteers.
By linking information about genes, medicines and disease, the system aims to predict which drugs might work best for particular heart conditions instead of relying only on traditional trial-and-error approaches.
Among the medicines highlighted were methotrexate, normally used for rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes drugs known as gliptins, which the AI suggested could support some heart patients.
The model also pointed to a possible protective effect from caffeine among people with atrial fibrillation, although researchers warned that individuals should not change their caffeine intake based on the findings alone.
Scientists say the same technology could be applied to other health problems, including brain disorders and obesity.
Work is already under way to turn the knowledge graph into a patient-centred system that follows real disease pathways, with the long-term goal of enabling more personalised and better-timed treatment.
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