AI to Predict Your Health Later in Life--All at the Press of a Button

Published:06 Aug.2023 Source:Edith Cowan University

Thanks to artificial intelligence, we will soon be able to predict our risk of developing serious health conditions later in life, at the press of a button. Abdominal aortic calcification, or AAC, is a calcification which can build up within the walls of the abdominal aorta and predicts your risk of developing cardiovascular disease events such as heart attacks and stroke. It also predicts your risk of falls, fractures and late-life dementia. Conveniently, common bone density machine scans used to detect osteoporosis, can also detect AAC. However, highly trained expert readers are needed to analyse the images, a process which can take 5~15 minutes per image. But researchers from Edith Cowan University's (ECU) School of Science and School of Medical and Health Sciences have collaborated to develop software which can analyse scans much, much faster: roughly 60 000 images in a single day.

Though it's not the first algorithm developed to assess AAC from these images, the study is the biggest of its kind, was based on the most commonly used bone density machine models, and is the first to be tested in a real-world setting using images taken as part of routine bone density testing. It saw more than 5 000 images analysed by experts and the team's software. After comparing the results, the expert and software arrived at the same conclusion for the extent of AAC (low, moderate or high) 80 per cent of the time -- an impressive figure given it was the first version of the software.

Importantly, only 3 per cent of people deemed to have high AAC levels were incorrectly diagnosed to have low levels by the software.