St Petersburg University cardiovascular surgeon develops neural network to treat patients with heart disease
Gleb Kim, a physician at St Petersburg University’s Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies, has created a neural network that, using the database of the encoded medical histories of patients, can predict the development of cardiovascular diseases and also give recommendations for their treatment. This project took first place in the All-Russian competition League of the Future, in the field of healthcare.
The St Petersburg University Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies
By means of the system A Second Opinion: Neural Networks and Aortic Pathology in Cardiac Surgery, specialists from all over the country will be able to obtain expert assistance in managing patients with a life-threatening condition — an aneurysm or aortic dissection. It will suffice for the doctor to provide a certain amount of date from the patient’s medical history: clinical data, their anthropometry, the results from a computed tomography scan of the aorta and an echocardiogram. The neural network will then give its predictions and recommendations.
The conclusions of the expert system are formed as a result of its training, which is based on encoded data from the histories of patients’ illnesses. It is planned to collect the big data that is necessary to effectively train the neural networks in cooperation with cardiac surgeons and cardiologists from all regions of Russia.
In order to carry out the project, a team was formed, which includes cardiac surgeons Gleb Kim and Viktor Piagai from the St Petersburg University Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies and St Petersburg University programmers. The work of creating the neural network A Second Opinion has been going on with the support of the University for about a year and a half. So far, nine models of neural networks have been created and are being tested. At present, the main task of development is to accumulate data, as this is what makes it possible for the neural network to learn and to form accurate recommendations.
Out of 50,000 works that were submitted in March for participation in the League of the Future competition, 10,000 ideas were culled out for expert assessment. Young adults from all regions of the country presented their initiatives to improve life in various fields, such as ecology, agriculture, industry, education, digitalisation, social support, urban infrastructure, culture and sport.
The field of healthcare was one of the most popular — 414 ideas were submitted in this category. Then, in Moscow, the results were summed up: 100 finalists, whose ideas garnered high accolades from the experts and popular support after voting, will receive resource support from branch departments of the government over the course of one year.
Gleb Kim was among 13 winners of the first season in the All-Russian League of the Future competition who were invited to a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Tatyana Golikova. She acknowledged that the initiative put forward by the team of cardiac surgeons from the St Petersburg University clinic could in the long run be of great significance not only for science and medical practice but also for public health. A reduction in the level of mortality from cardiovascular disease is a high-priority federal project whose relevance has only increased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.