研究概况:袁春，博士.D.
What do you get when you combine one researcher’s passion for understanding how atherosclerosis develops in human arteries, 检查膝关节骨关节炎的大数据集, and a precision medicine platform that turns passion and data into a much-needed understanding of how healthy vessels become hardened and stiff?
你可以读到春元博士的故事.D., one of the latest researchers to receive a data science grant from the 美国心脏协会 Institute of Precision Cardiovascular Medicine.
元, professor of Radiology and Bioengineering and vice-chair of Global Affairs at the University of Washington (Seattle), uses imaging to explore how plaques and atherosclerosis develop in arteries over many years.
“为了防止心脏病发作或中风, we really need to understand how atherosclerosis develops and how it evolves over time,袁说. “We believe that direct imaging of plaques may help us to find better ways of diagnosing, 治疗, 最终预防动脉粥样硬化.”
直到现在, studying the development of atherosclerosis on a large scale was challenging, 艰苦的, 几乎不可能. 所需的血管成像, 在这种情况下，磁共振成像(MRI), 是昂贵的, and researchers would have to follow thousands of people over many years.
But 元 and colleagues found such a dataset in an unlikely place. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the Osteoarthritis Initiative, 之后将近5年,000 people with annual MRIs of the knee for about eight years. Researchers from that study also gathered robust information about people’s health, 包括心血管健康, 锻炼, 还有饮食习惯.
“The purpose of the study was to look at the human knee—not the vessels. But interestingly, that study’s MRIs have the blood vessel information we need,” 元 said.
With data in hand, 元 and colleagues faced their next challenge. For each of the approximately 4,900 people studied, there were about 70 MRI images of their knees. A human researcher quantitatively measuring changes in the vessels would take about four hours for each patient, so manual measurement and analysis of the data would take years.
元 co-directs a research lab at the University of Washington that specializes in vascular imaging and vascular image analysis. He and his colleagues started looking into using artificial intelligence, 或人工智能, to analyze the imaging data much faster and extract useful information for his cardiovascular research.
“That’s where the Institute for Precision Cardiovascular Medicine comes in,” 元 said.
The AHA Institute awarded 元 a data science grant of $200,两年内5000美元和50美元,000美元的亚马逊网络服务积分, which allow use of the Institute’s Precision Medicine Platform. Using the Precision Medicine Platform’s cloud-based data analysis, 元 reduced the time needed to read each patient’s MRI data from four hours to seven minutes. The Institute’s platform allows 元’s advanced deep learning techniques to swiftly identify artery location, 勾画血管壁轮廓, 量化血管特征, and identify arteries with diseases from MR knee scans without human intervention.
“Without the NIH’s dataset and the AHA’s funding, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” 元 said. “This is the perfect combination of having the data that we have been looking for and the AI-based algorithms that can actually analyze the data, 美国心脏协会提供了资金. 这真是一个美丽的故事.”
动脉粥样硬化在人类中发展缓慢, often taking decades to cause symptoms or an event like a heart attack or stroke. 元’s research is providing the multiyear data needed to analyze how lesions evolve in the vessels—whether they develop, 回归或, 在某些情况下, 消失.
一旦他们分析了数据, 元 and colleagues will understand better how things like 锻炼 regimens or dietary habits impact atherosclerosis development.
对于袁来说，这些答案等待了很长线上电子游戏飞禽走兽, 他在20世纪80年代开始研究核磁共振成像. But the personal desire to prevent heart attacks and strokes came much earlier and still drives him today.
“My mother had a heart attack when I was very young, in middle school. I was the only one at home at the time to take care of the family. The hardship I went through when my mother had the heart attack had a huge impact on my passion for this research to prevent heart attack and stroke,他说.
