Patients with heart failure, coronary artery diseases and heart muscle diseases depend on accurate, timely MRI reports for vital diagnosis and treatment decisions. Pioneering technology that uses AI to speed up the comparison of heart scans has been in routine clinical use at STH since 2022, processing more than 8,000 MRI scans and saving tens of thousands of pounds in staff time. However, the final step of reporting remains a manual, time-consuming bottleneck.

This innovative project will look to develop and implement an add-on to the existing award-winning in-house AI system that will instantly generate draft structured reporting of AI-derived measurements of the heart’s structure and function. These will be automatically tracked to UK genetic and lifestyle Biobank data based on how the heart changes according to age, gender, ethnicity and body size, enabling personalised reports. The draft reports will then be edited and approved by consultants from the draft.

They will also present binary findings (e.g. ‘dilated’ meaning the heart’s chambers are enlarged or the walls may be thinned or ‘normal’ indicating standard size and function). As well as removing the need for cardiologists and radiologists to manually copy measurements, cross-reference normal ranges, and interpret findings one by one, the tool will free up hundreds of consultant hours per year. This time can then be redirected back into direct patient care, especially for interrogating increasingly complex scans and making diagnostic decisions.

The technology, which could be scaled up across other centres, will standardise report content and make reports more intuitive. The project will be delivered over 12 months by a dedicated clinical scientist in the 3D Lab, in collaboration with a computer scientist from the University of Sheffield and clinical leads in radiology and cardiology. The current in-house AI tool for cardiac MRI analysis was named a Future NHS winner at the 2023 NHS Parliamentary Awards. It was also a Medipex NHS Innovation Award winner in 2022.

The NIHR funds, enables and delivers world-leading health and social care research that improves people's health and wellbeing and promotes economic growth.

NIHR Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs) are collaborations between NHS organisations and universities. They bring together academics and clinicians to translate scientific discoveries into potential new treatments, diagnostics and technologies.