Collaboration with Leading Heart and Vascular Programs Nationally to Prevent Catastrophic Cardiac Events Aims to Upend Current Assessments, Save Lives
Partho Sengupta, MD, DM, FACC, FASE, Henry Rutgers Professor and the Chief of Cardiology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) and Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH), left, is the principal investigator for a four-year National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) study to develop new technology that will better manage patients presenting with heart attacks. RWJUH and RWJMS were awarded a $2.4 million grant from the NHLBI to complete the study.
(New Brunswick, NJ) - Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) and Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) were awarded a $2.4 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to develop new technology to better manage patients presenting with heart attacks.
RWJUH is part of RWJBarnabas Health, New Jersey’s largest academic health system. The NHLBI provides global leadership for a research, training, and education program to promote the prevention and treatment of heart, lung, and blood disorders.
According to Partho Sengupta, MD, DM, FACC, FASE, Henry Rutgers Professor and the Chief of Cardiology at RWJMS and RWJUH and principal investigator for the four-year study, scores that can predict the risk of a future cardiac event in patients presenting with heart attack were developed nearly two decades ago and do not include current imaging technology in their calculations.
Dr. Sengupta and his team believe that data gathered from this study will help clinicians and hospitals develop high-precision decision support tools for early identification and referral of high-risk patients with heart disease for individualized care at centers of excellence in heart and vascular care.
“The current risk calculations were developed prior to the modern therapies we have today,” Dr. Sengupta explains. “By conducting this study, we will use artificial intelligence techniques to develop software that can automatically extract quantitative imaging features from the ultrasound images of the heart to identify patients with a heart attack who are at high-risk of death or developing complications.”There are three primary goals of the study. First is to develop a more accurate risk calculation tool using AI-based imaging features that predict complications from a heart attack or risk of death. Second, is to use this technology to identify Non-ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (NSTEMI) patients who aren’t transferred initially to a cardiac catheterization laboratory because there is no significant irregularity or elevation of their ST reading on an electrocardiogram. NSTEMI has been considered a less serious form of heart attack where there may be partial blockage of a coronary artery, leading to reduced blood flow to the heart muscle.
“However, modern data states that an estimated 30-40 percent of NSTEMI patients have more seriously occluded (blocked) arteries that are missed by the ECG,” Dr. Sengupta notes. “The goal is to get these patients to the cath lab earlier to open their arteries and avoid more damage to the heart muscle.”
Finally, Dr. Sengupta believes the ultrasound-based information at the bed side that researchers gather will provide information similar to what is currently produced by an MRI. The investigators have been recently granted a patent on this technology.
“MRI is not accessible to patients everywhere,” Dr. Sengupta says. “Ultrasound is more widely available. Our preliminary clinical data support that cardiac ultrasound radiomics − a mathematical framework that converts standard of care cardiac ultrasound images into minable high-dimensional data − can identify patients at high risk for hospitalization for serious cardiac events.”
Dr. Sengupta notes that this study will involve collaboration and sharing of data among several RWJBarnabas Health Heart & Vascular programs, including Esad Vucic, MD, PhD, an imaging specialist in the field of echocardiography and advanced cardiovascular imaging at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Vucic will serve as consultant and provide research training for residents and fellows across multiple hospitals.
Sabahat Bokhari, MD, Professor of Medicine, Director, Advanced Cardiac Imaging at RWJMS and Director, The Cardiac Amyloidosis and Cardiomyopathy Center at RWJUH; and Naveena Yanamala, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Section Chief and Director of Research and Innovation at RWJMS; are co-investigators for the study.
RWJUH and RWJMS researchers will also collaborate throughout the study with nationally distinguished clinicians and researchers including Jeff Carson, Provost, New Brunswick, Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences; and Distinguished Professor, Department of Medicine, RWJMS; David J Foran, Chief Informatics Officer and Executive Director of Biomedical Informatics and Computational Imaging, Rutgers Cancer Institute; Bernard Chaitman. MD, FACC, Professor of Medicine and Director of Cardiovascular Research at St. Louis University School of Medicine; and Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, who is the William A. Zoghbi, MD, Centennial Chair in Cardiovascular Health at Houston Methodist Hospital’s DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center.Data will be independently reviewed and verified in a core laboratory led by Jordan Strom, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Director, Echocardiography Laboratory, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Section Head, CV Imaging Research, Smith Center for Outcomes Research. AI models will be developed in collaboration with investigators, Donald Adjeroh and Gianfranco Doretto, both Professors at Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University.
“This study provides a rich environment for collaboration and learning among our clinicians, cardiac fellows and computer engineers who will be working closely together to develop enhanced decision-support tools, which we assert will ultimately improve the preventative care that we provide to patients diagnosed with heart disease,” Dr. Sengupta adds.
“This grant gives us a tremendous opportunity as a system to leverage the breadth of our heart and vascular programs to gather important data that has the potential to significantly enhance cardiac care in the future,” notes Conor Barrett, MD, MBA, Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer for Heart and Vascular Services for RWJBarnabas Health. “The study aligns perfectly with our mission as an academic health system to be a regional and national leader in research and innovation.”
About Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) New Brunswick, an RWJBarnabas Health Facility, is a 628-bed academic medical center that is New Jersey’s largest academic medical center through its deep partnership with Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. RWJUH is the flagship Cancer Hospital of Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and The Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, a nationally-ranked 2024-25 Best Children’s Hospital by U.S. News & World Report. Centers of Excellence include cardiovascular care from minimally invasive heart surgery to transplantation, cancer care, stroke care, neuroscience, orthopedics, bariatric surgery and women’s health. A Level 1 Trauma Center and the first designated Pediatric Trauma Center in the state, RWJUH’s New Brunswick campus serves as a national resource in its ground-breaking approaches to emergency preparedness. Learn more at www.rwjbh.org/newbrunswick or www.bmsch.org.