Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of death in Europe and is estimated to cost the EU economy €210 bn a year – with the ongoing population aging providing additional tailwind to these alarming numbers. The common goal uniting the MARCIUS partners was to provide training and develop new solutions at the intersection of clinical cardiac imaging, basic cardiac physiology and pathophysiology, and biomedical engineering through a combination and exchange of expertise in the different, but highly complementary, fields of echocardiography, artificial intelligence, and biophysical cardiac modelling, with the aim of reducing the financial burden and improving care of CVD patients.
The MARCIUS consortium consisted of three beneficiaries; GE Vingmed Ultrasound (the coordinator) in Norway, KU Leuven in Belgium, and Maastricht University in The Netherlands, and four partner institutes; Intelligent Ultrasound (formerly MedaPhor Ltd.) in Wales, Jessa Hospital in Belgium, and Oslo University Hospital and the University of Oslo in Norway. Two early-stage researchers (ESR’s) from each of the beneficiary institutes were recruited for the MARCIUS project.
The MARCIUS goal was to develop a comprehensive in-silico simulation platform comprising both the generation of virtual patients, the work of ESR1 - Claudia Alessandra Manetti, from Italy, working at Maastricht University, and their associated realistic image data, the work of ESR2 – Nitin Burman, from India, working at KU Leuven. This made it possible to LEARN the most relevant patterns within a wide representative set of patients to lead the training of machine learning-based image processing algorithms in order to ANALYZE real-world clinical data by: 1) characterizing tissue properties, the work of ESR3 – Paulo Tostes, from Brazil, working at KU Leuven, 2) evaluate anatomy and function, the work of Cristiana Tiago, from Portugal, working at GE Vingmed Ultrasound AS and 3) ultimately automate the interpretation of the resulting information into clinical decisions, the work of ESR5 - Mujde Akdeniz, from Turkey, working at GE Vingmed Ultrasound AS. The consortium leveraged existing clinical & simulated data to fast-track the development of the core methodologies and reduce the critical inter-dependency between projects. Lastly, a clinical-oriented ESR6 – Ahmed Salem Beela, from Egypt, working at Maastricht University, not only curated the available data but also ensured tight connections to clinical key opinion leaders and ultimately APPLIED the developed tools in in order to validate them and to study the pathophysiology of failing hearts.
