Imperial’s smart heart reading T-shirt nets £340k

The money from The British Heart Foundation is intended to ensure the project, if successful, could enable at-risk patients to access speedier treatment for their conditions. 

Professor of Cardiology at Imperial, Zachary Whinnett’s team will train the AI using electrocardiogram (ECG) data from more than 1000 individuals. By providing information both from those with inherited conditions and those without, the process is intended to enable the algorithm to recognise abnormal ECG patterns.

For the second stage, the team will test the garment’s effectiveness using 200 patients and volunteers who will each wear the clothing for up to three months.  

The vest style t-shirt is designed to be worn underneath clothes for sleeping and eating, with wires in the fabric measuring electrical signals, allowing it to be employed far longer than the usual monitoring period for hospital testing. 

The intention is to make the technology available for scaled up use in hospitals by the end of the decade.

Coincidentally, the numerical value of the award, £340,000 equates to the estimated 340,000 people in the UK that possess an inherited heart condition that could put them at risk of dying. 

Sudden cardiac death is said to account for 12 deaths a week among under-35s in the UK. However, the relative brevity of traditional heart rhythm scans employed in hospitals means these often fail to detect the condition.  

Commented Whinnett: “One of the challenges of diagnosis today is that irregular heart rhythms may not always occur during routine 10 minute hospital ECGs. We hope our AI-assisted t-shirt will provide a practical and comfortable solution, allowing us to carry out longer-term scanning that could improve diagnosis. 

“By harnessing the power of AI, we hope our research can transform doctors’ abilities to spot these conditions and improve the lives of those who are unknowingly living with a genetic heart condition.” 

 Photo: Los Muertos Crew