Dissecting disease heterogeneity in cardiac patients using multimodal machine learning, modelling, and simulation method

Cardiac disease is a major cause of mortality, often leading to arrhythmic or mechanical death such as in heart failure, a condition which occurs when the heart stops being able to pump blood correctly. Despite lifestyle adjustments and life-long treatment to manage symptoms, the condition typically worsens over time and can lead to death or an urgent heart transplant. New methods are required to account for the variability of cardiac disease across a diverse patient population and to correctly evaluate severity and risks. New biomarkers derived from multimodal data could provide a stronger prognosis than current techniques by increasing diagnostic sensitivity, providing more details on the pathophysiology, predicting disease progression, and identifying the therapy option that best mitigates each individual's condition.The objective of this project is to develop novel computational methods that exploit the synergy between AI approaches and mechanistic modelling and simulation for the realisation of precision cardiology. Specific goals include identifying new multimodal biomarkers to define cardiac disease subgroups, investigating the underlying mechanisms of disease that explain these subgroups, and identifying therapeutic targets and treatments that best improve the outcomes of each subgroup. These studies will be carried out by using data-driven methods to leverage the wealth of information contained in the UK Biobank and Clinical Practice Research Datalink electronic health records, and by augmenting this information through digital twinning and simulations. Representative groups of patients will be identified by using machine learning strategies to integrate clinical data, such as cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and electrocardiogram, with patient demographics (e.g. age, sex, co-morbidities) and genetics. Unsupervised clustering strategies could provide preliminary patient subgroups. These subgroups could be compared to, or enhanced by, subgroups obtained from novel data representation strategies based on generative models (Beetz et al., 2022). This would help explain the phenotypical variability of cardiac disease in the human population and help automatically identify the biomarkers that define subgroups. Mechanistic differences between these subgroups can be explained using cardiac digital twins, which are built using an existing electromechanical pipeline that simulates cardiac activity based on the centroids of patient clusters obtained (Camps et al., 2021, Banerjee et al., 2021). In order to improve target identification in the clinic, we will investigate the efficacy of therapeutic options and their link to the new biomarkers by using simulation testing on each group's representative digital twin.
In summary, the project will deliver novel strategies combining AI and simulation methods, helping to uncover new data-driven trends in cardiac biomarkers and perform cardiac simulations on a per-patient basis level to unravel mechanisms of disease. The work aims to improve current diagnosis methods and enable the discovery of more tailored treatment regimens for cardiac patients, helping to alleviate the global burden of fatal cardiac diseases.
This project falls within the EPSRC research area of Healthcare Technologies, more specifically at the intersection of Clinical Technologies and Analytical Science, and addresses the Grand Challenge of optimising disease prediction, diagnosis and intervention.

In the same way that bioinformatics has transformed genomic research and clinical practice, health data science will have a dramatic and lasting impact upon the broader fields of medical research, population health, and healthcare delivery. The beneficiaries of the proposed training programme, and of the research that it delivers and enables, will include academia, industry, healthcare, and the broader UK economy.

Academia: Graduates of the training programme will be well placed to start their post-doctoral careers in leading academic institutions, engaging in high-impact multi-disciplinary research, helping to build training and research capacity, sharing their experience within the wider academic community.

Industry: Partner organisations will benefit from close collaboration with leading researchers, from the joint exploration of research priorities, and from the commercialisation of arising intellectual property. Other organisations will benefit from the availability of highly-qualified graduates with skills in big health data analytics.

Healthcare: Healthcare organisations and patients will benefit from the results of enabled and accelerated health research, leading to new treatments and technologies, and an improved ability to identify and evaluate potential improvements in practice through the analysis of real-world health data.

Economy: The life sciences sector is a key component of the UK economy. The programme will provide partner companies with direct access to leading-edge research. Graduates of the programme will be well-qualified to contribute to economic growth - supporting health research and the development of new products and services - and will be able to inform policy and decision making at organisational, regional, and national levels.