Mayo Clinic enhances imaging test with AI

Researchers at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic used AI to determine that measuring fat around the heart greatly improves the accuracy of predicting long-term cardiovascular disease risk.

The investigators applied AI to thousands of study participants’ standard coronary artery scans, finding that the volume of heart fat could forecast cardiovascular events, according to the research published March 24 in the American Journal of Preventive Cardiology.

“Because this measurement comes from imaging that many patients are already receiving, it represents a practical and scalable way to enhance cardiovascular risk assessment,” said senior author Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, MD, co-director of the AI in Cardiology program at Mayo Clinic, in a March 31 news release. “It could help clinicians intervene earlier and more effectively.”

Future studies could look at how to best integrate coronary fat measurement into routine clinical visits and if it can inform treatment decisions, the researchers said.

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