Researchers Use AI System to Map Novel Cardiac Features Of COVID-19

A joint UK-US study will apply a pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) system to map for the first time how the COVID-19 virus attacks the heart with such deadly impact.

A collaboration between Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA) and Ultromics (Oxford, England) aims to quantify cardiac involvement in COVID-19 and help triage high-risk patients with myocardial injury.

The COVID-19 coronavirus has considerable potential for cardiovascular impact including COVID induced microvascular disease and myocarditis,and side-effects from some treatments, known as therapy-associated cardiotoxicity. 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.

Mayo Clinic will assist health-tech company Ultromics in the development of an image analysis application to help clinicians in the fight against COVID-19. Ultromics’ AI software, EchoGo Core, will be used to analyze the echocardiograms of COVID-19 victims for clues about how the virus affects the human cardiovascular system. EchoGo Core is a fully automated, zero-click system with zero variability that applies AI to automate the analysis of echocardiograms. Their findings will produce, for the first time, a map of the ‘novel cardiac features’ of COVID-19 and help physicians rapidly triage and treat high-risk patients, potentially saving countless lives.

“To date, there is no way of linking the impact of the virus to predicted patient outcomes,” said Ross Upton, CEO of Ultromics. “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 optimized – this is incredibly important where resources are scarce. Most importantly, we can give physicians the gift of time to treat those most in danger.”

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Mayo Clinic
Ultromics