Fellowship Bio

Dr Ashiv Patel is a General Practitioner working in Northwest London. He is passionate about the benefit that Artificial Intelligence can provide to the wider population. His role as a primary care physician will allow him to leverage the expertise he has gained through this fellowship, to support a reduction of healthcare inequality and improve access to care.

Fellowship Project

Predicting thoracic aortic aneurysm progression with AI to plan surveillance and elective surgery

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

Thoracic aortic aneurysms are a life-threatening condition. This project aims to provide better prognostication by developing software to analyse imaging and produce a 3D digital model of the aorta, predict progression and provide individual assessment. My role as a medical advisor in the development of an algorithm to predict the progression of thoracic aortic aneurysms, offering clinical guidance through-out the AI life cycle process, obtaining ethical approval, image analysis, data curation and algorithm refinement. The project has taken two significant steps forward following ethical approval, the first was in the development of a source code to accurately predict the progression of healthy thoracic aortas. This was then further refined through the assessment of over 10,000 scans to find relevant data for the next step of training and ultimately the development of a prediction algorithm that could predict progression in patients with aneurysmal aortas. The algorithm will need to be further refined and this will be achieved using biomechanical data of patients included in the training data set, information such a blood pressure, height and weight will aid in enriching the predictive model. Following this the AI tool could be enriched by using a larger training set and we are currently in gaining ethical approval for data from other trusts to be utilised. Once a robust and clinically accurate model has been developed, the project would enter the deployment phase, where it has the potential to change medical practice with regards to thoracic aneurysms.

Fellowship Testimonial

The Fellowship in Clinical AI has afforded me the opportunity to develop my knowledge and skills of AI within the clinical setting. I have been fortunate to work within a world-class research lab under the guidance of Professor Declan O’Regan at Imperial College London. My involvement in three different AI projects, spanning the breadth of the AI lifecycle has been eye-opening and allowed me to gain expertise in the design, development and deployment of AI solutions within a healthcare setting. I feel these skills will allow me to lead change within the NHS by continuing to work with clinical AI and I aim to utilise this expertise in the primary care setting where it can impact healthcare services nationally.