The Kick-off meeting for SmartHeart was held on Friday 3 March at Imperial College London. SmartHeart’s ambitious vision is to pave the way for a radical new approach by which cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are diagnosed, monitored and treated: a diagnosis-driven “smart Magnetic Resonance (MR) scanner” will be developed that is not a mere imaging device, but also provides a comprehensive diagnostic assessment and interpretation of the patient’s cardiovascular health/disease, enabling optimal treatment decisions for the best patient outcome.
SmartHeart is a five-year programme grant funded by the EPSRC (EP/P001009/1). The kick-off meeting was attended by researchers in machine learning, MRI acquisition and cardiology. The talks focused on the current state-of-the-art, the challenges faced in the project, and work plans for the next 12 months. Moreover, there was discussion on the clinical challenges for cardiac MRI in population studies, and how far machine learning can go in diagnosing and suggesting treatments for heart disease. The findings from this meeting will help to shape the research agenda and to achieve a common understanding of the key challenges and requirements of SmartHeart.