Why is it in news?

Google, through Artificial Intelligence (AI) has developed a system which could help detect risks associated with heart attacks.

Details

• Knowing the risk of a heart attack or a stroke could soon become as simple as an eye test as researchers at Google and its health—tech arm Verily have found that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) could help identify signals of heart diseases through retinal images.
• The study, published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, showed that deep learning applied to a retinal fundus image, a photograph that includes the blood vessels of the eye, can predict risk factors for heart diseases — from blood pressure to smoking status.
• The algorithm that the researchers produced can even help predict the occurrence of a future major cardiovascular event, said Michael McConnell, Head of Cardiovascular Health Innovations at Verily.
• Using data from 284,335 patients, the researchers were able to predict cardiovascular risk factors with surprisingly high accuracy.

Conclusion

• Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally and researchers know that lifestyle factors including exercise and diet in combination with genetic factors, age, ethnicity, and sex all contribute to it.
• India has one of the highest burdens of lifestyle diseases in the world and one of the highest numbers of deaths in India are attributed to lifestyle diseases. Hence, such a technology will immensely help in early detection and timely treatment, which can help save many lives.

Source

The Hindu