UNITY: UK collaborative for integrating AI into echocardiography

Echocardiography is the bedrock of assessing the heart in clinical practice. There is huge potential for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate analysis, increase efficiency, and tackle image quality and reproducibility issues. However, echo is more challenging than conventional AI image processing (e.g. for self-driving cars) because borders are less distinct, yet precision more important, and specific measurements are the focus. Our UK Collaborative of cardiologists, physiologists and AI experts, and the British Society of Echocardiography, will take AI in echo forward into clinical applicability, aligned with the NHS plan for world leadership in AI in 5 years. Our pilot work has already delivered tens of thousands of expert labels, from which we have successfully built, presented and published AIs. Our programme addresses 7 needs for AI in echo: (1) a national bank of annotations by named experts on tens of thousands of echo images; specially designed AI technology for (2) echo images, (3) identifying cardiac cycle timepoints, (4) making Doppler measurements; (5) clinical acquisition protocols to improve reproducibility; (6) open validation against UK experts; (7) comparison with cardiac MR. It will also provide the UK’s many world authorities in echo with tools for their own future research.