How Computer Modeling Lets Doctors Predict Heart Attacks Before They Happen
Digitally Modeling the Heart NVIDIAGPU-driven processing is bringing the predictive power of supercomputers to the radiology suite Heart attacks strike about 1.2 million people every year in America alone, many of them fatally. Of those, most are caused by coronary artery disease--the biggest killer of both men and women in the U.S.--and something like 70 percent of those strike without warning. Coronary artery disease is sneaky like that. Symptoms generally don't outwardly manifest themselves until someone is on the floor, short of breath, wondering what just kicked them in the chest. Doctors battling these cardiac blockages generally enter the fight at a severe disadvantage. The disease almost always benefits from the element of surprise. "We have no way to predict where the blockages will be, and a lot of the time we catch the stenoses too late," says Dr. Frank Rybicki, director of the Applied Imaging Science Laboratory at Brigham and...