This article was first published in the April 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Here's a new way to picture your heart in action. The image above was created by US diagnostics company HeartFlow, which uses scans of the chest to make interactive 3D models of coronary arteries and, crucially, show the flow of blood to the heart.
The technique is intended to help cardiologists better understand the significance of blockages in arteries which show up in scans. Sometimes these appear worrying, but it's notoriously difficult to tell if an invasive procedure, such as putting in a stent via catheterisation, is actually necessary. "What you have to know," explains HeartFlow CEO John Stevens, "is if a blockage is functionally important. We build a model for each individual patient, not only of the anatomy of their heart, but the physiology of all the blood flow in their vessels." Knowing the thickness of the heart muscle, for instance, helps determine how much blood flow the patient requires at rest or while exercising.
To calculate the flow of blood, HeartFlow draws on computational fluid dynamics, a technique in which the flow of liquid is modelled numerically. This means that the actual pressure placed on specific blockages can be estimated. "We know what the forces are that could cause them to burst," says Stevens. The analysis is then sent back to the clinician by the following morning. Bjarne Nørgaard from the Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark is one of the doctors who have been using HeartFlow. "We have performed almost 400 examinations," he says. "We don't see as many unnecessary catheterisations as we did before."
Since receiving approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, HeartFlow has been in talks with hospitals and health departments around the world. And Stevens argues that computational analysis of chest scans has more than one benefit: "Here, high tech benefits the patient as well as reducing the cost of care substantially."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
