Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, taking a life every 33 seconds and accounting for about 20% of all annual deaths.
Diagnosing heart conditions can be difficult, especially because the heart’s natural tissue and the way it reacts to light can interfere with medical imaging.
But scientists have now developed a new algorithm that could help doctors get clearer pictures of the heart, allowing them to catch heart problems earlier and improve patient outcomes.
The new technology was created by researchers supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and was recently published in Nature Cardiovascular Research.
It’s designed to improve the way doctors and scientists see inside the heart using imaging tools.
According to Eric Lyons, a program director at the NSF, this breakthrough could also be used beyond heart health, including in brain imaging and studies of other living tissues, opening up many possibilities for medical and scientific discoveries.
One of the big challenges in heart imaging is that current tools each have their limitations.
Some can’t go deep enough into the body, others can’t capture tiny details like molecules, and many struggle to work quickly enough to capture changes happening in real time.
The new algorithm solves many of these problems by using a technique called “multiscale recursive decomposition.” This means it breaks down images into smaller, detailed parts at different levels, making it easier to spot important patterns or movements inside the heart.
This approach allows doctors and scientists to measure things like the size of heart chambers and the flow of blood with much greater accuracy.
It can also track multiple features at the same time, helping build a more complete and dynamic picture of the heart’s activity. All of this could help doctors identify signs of heart disease much earlier and treat it more effectively.
Importantly, this tool works with the microscopes that doctors and labs already use, so it could be adopted quickly and widely.
It’s not just limited to the heart either—it could help researchers better understand how other parts of the body work at a microscopic level.
By making medical images clearer and more detailed, this new algorithm could be a game-changer for detecting and treating cardiovascular disease, ultimately saving lives and improving care for millions of people.
