by Angie Short ('95)
It kills more people than any cancer. Every thirty seconds, an American suffers a heart attack. Every minute, one dies. Many of us could be at risk and not know it until it’s too late. We hear the unsettling news more frequently than ever before—it’s happening to seemingly healthy, active people.
“Each year, more than a million Americans suffer from heart attacks—about half prove fatal,” says Ioannis A. Kakadiaris, Eckhard Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science and director of the UH Computational Biomedicine Laboratory. “Sudden cardiac death is a major concern, with the majority of deaths occurring in apparently healthy people.”
University of Houston computer scientists and biomedical engineers, in collaboration with the Ultimate Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) team, are paving the way for early detection.
Heart 101
Kakadiaris and doctoral student Sean O’Malley are collaborating with Dr. Morteza Naghavi and other leading cardiologists from the Association for Eradication of Heart Attacks to (AEHA) develop computer technology that will alert physicians to a patient’s risk.
“The heart ‘time-bomb’ happens in unaware, healthy-looking people, known as ‘vulnerable patients,’” Kakadiaris says. “These vulnerable patients bear a very high risk of having a heart attack in the next twelve months.”
Most people will live for years with plaque—the buildup of cholesterol and fatty deposits in the arteries. Unstable and inflamed plaque is prone to ruptures. This “vulnerable plaque” creates a blood clot resulting in a heart attack or stroke.
To circumvent this deadly problem, researchers are developing imaging technology that will allow doctors to detect regions of blood vessels susceptible to future rupture and sudden blockage. Early detection can reduce the number of fatalities occurring every year due to unpredicted heart attacks.
This imaging technology will help pinpoint plaque vulnerability early on—and ultimately this may prevent a heart attack before it happens. Kakadiaris’ team is responsible for the algorithms and the software.
“For the first time, we have the ability to see the existence of new vessels growing in the plaque,” Kakadiaris says. “This will alert us to plaque areas with increased inflammation.”
Heartful Collaborations
Kakadiaris and researchers around the world are determined to locate this dangerous plaque. The Division of Information and Intelligent Systems of the National Science Foundation has funded Kakadiaris with a three-year, $556,000 grant for this research.
| A cross-sectional view of the interior of a human coronary artery, as captured by an intravascular ultrasound. The darkest red spots indicate calcified deposits of advanced atherosclerosis, a symptom of coronary artery disease. |
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His lab is part of the Ultimate IVUS Collaborative Project at UH. The collaborative effort includes UH Mechanical Engineering Professor Ralph Metcalfe and a number of other physicians and scientists involved in preclinical and clinical studies from the University of Athens Medical School, Cardiovascular Research Foundation and Columbia University Medical Center, Aarhus University in Denmark, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and Baylor College of Medicine. Their collaboration is supported by the AEHA, a nonprofit organization that promotes education and research related to the prevention, detection, and treatment of heart attacks.
An Ounce of Prevention
The statistics are alarming. For most people, a heart attack is their first and only symptom.
“Even for presidents, who have access to the best medical care, cardiovascular disease can go unnoticed,” Kakadiaris says in reference to former President Bill Clinton’s heart trouble. “Clinton himself blamed ‘insufficient vigilance’ and stressed the importance of repeated testing as a means of heart disease prevention,” says Kakadiaris.
Supporting this line of thinking, the “Clinton Syndrome” is getting into SHAPE.
The Screening for Heart Attack Prevention and Education (SHAPE) Task Force recently proposed a new public screening initiative for at-risk populations. SHAPE calls for men forty-five and older and women fifty-five and older to undergo a three-step comprehensive vascular health assessment. Learn more about getting into SHAPE at www.aeha.org.
Kakadiaris is hopeful that national and international studies like his lab’s imaging technology—along with an increased emphasis on public education—will help reduce the number of heart attacks in years to come.
You Oughta Know  |
• More than 63 million Americans have cardio- vascular disease, but only one in five know. |
• 1.3 million Americans a year have heart attacks—the number one killer in the nation. |
• UH received more than $27 million last year from the National Institutes of Health. |
• Annually, 15 million heart attacks occur worldwide. |
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