A Waterford-based researcher has received more than €500,000 to employ artificial intelligence (AI) to combat childhood heart disease.
Dr Lizy Abraham of South East Technological University (SETU) has been awarded €556,070 to finish a project titled An Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Automated Approach for the Classification of Pediatric Heart Murmurs and Disease Diagnosis Using Wireless Phonocardiography.
According to the project proposal, congenital heart diseases (CHDs) are abnormalities caused by improper heart development during a child’s birth.
“Listening to the heart using a stethoscope to detect heart murmurs is the most prevalent clinical screening procedure for neonates. However, it heavily relies on the physician’s experience. The gold standard for diagnosing CHD is echocardiography, which has limitations when conducted on youngsters. It takes approximately 30-45 minutes and requires youngsters to remain still.
Referring all children with a murmur to an expensive and time-consuming diagnostic technique such as echocardiography is not practical nor cost-effective. Another useful method is to use intelligent techniques to analyze phonocardiograms (PCGs), which are plots of heart murmurs collected with a digital stethoscope.
“PCG signals combined with the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), can provide an objective interpretation of heart sounds to complement the traditional auscultation methods that use Echocardiogram.”This study presents an AI-based approach for detecting cardiac disorders utilizing PCG heart sound waves. This will assist physicians and primary health care professionals in the early detection of CHDs, rather than youngsters undergoing costly and time-consuming diagnostic procedures directly.”
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