A team led by Mayo Clinic neurologist Dr. David Freeman is developing AI to speed stroke diagnosis. (Image from Mayo Clinic)
A team of physicians at Mayo Clinic is developing artificial intelligence designed to improve outcomes for people who suffer from a kind of stroke called an intracerebral hemorrhage, or ICH, according to the health system.
Currently, patients with an ICH go to a hospital with symptoms, get a CAT scan, and then have to wait for results and for doctors to figure out how to address it. During all that time, their chances of dying increase every minute. The Mayo team’s AI program might reduce that time and damage to the brain, according to a news release from Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo.
In an intracerebral hemorrhage, a blood vessel in the brain bursts and spills into the surrounding brain tissue, damaging brain cells. Brain cells beyond the leak are deprived of blood and are also damaged. Causes include high blood pressure, trauma, vascular malformations and use of blood-thinning medications.
“It’s been estimated 1.9 million neurons die for every minute a stroke patient is having a stroke,” said Mayo neurologist Dr. David Freeman. “A patient with an ICH will have that CAT scan analyzed by the machine learning and output specific treatment interventions … for better outcomes.”
Freeman estimates AI could help save up to 30 minutes of time that patients now wait before treatment may begin.
