Professor Charalambos Antoniades is one of the researchers interviewed as part of the University's AI showcase, about his team's work developing technology that analyses coronory tomography (CT) angiograms to flag patients that are at risk of deadly heart attacks.
Heart attacks are usually caused by inflamed plaques in the coronary artery causing an abrupt blockage of blood getting to the heart. Professor Antoniades’ team has developed a technology, called the fat attenuation index (FAI), which detects the inflamed plaques prone to causing heart attacks by analysing CT images of the fat surrounding the arteries – something that is filtered out by any standard CT image analysis software.
Dr Antoniades said: "‘For the first time we have a set of biomarkers, derived from a routine test that is already used in everyday clinical practice, that measures what we call the “residual cardiovascular risk”, currently missed by all risk scores and non-invasive tests.
‘Knowing who is at increased risk for a heart attack could allow us to intervene early enough to prevent it. I expect these biomarkers to become an essential part of standard CT coronary angiography reporting in the coming years.’
Read the full article on the Oxford University website.
Read The Lancet paper on the Fat Attenuation Index.